Once in a while, an actor of the struggles of sustainability is taking over the blog to express their joy, anger, annoyance or just comment about anything they care about in the sustainable world. This is an open space, so their opinion may differ from mine, but this is what the world is about. Have a good read!
Today I leave the space to my dear friend Charlotte, who is a smart and angry tree-hugger and planet-lover, and very mad at tea bags and the companies that make them.
I’ve been wanting to start a blog for a while. Not because I think I have something to say to the world that hasn’t been said already, but more for myself- to get my ideas straight and improve my writing skills, make connections between what I find interesting, and keep a log of my thoughts over time. Having the pressure and possibility of someone reading and thinking “what the hell is she on about” means I’m more likely to get on with it and try to be as coherent as possible, so here goes: My first post!
Similar to Mathilde, I’ve been “obsessed” with the idea of sustainability and asking myself what on earth it actually means for several years now. Everyone has different ideas of what it means, and the complicated thing is there is no straightforward, one-size-fits-all answer. From what I understand, there are only multiple approaches to sustainability depending on what the person using the word values. I’ll try and explain what I mean through an example. Following the trend of my fellow conflicted and inescapably hypocritical tree-hugging urbanites who talk about forests all the time while surrounded by concrete (hi there I’m definitely one of you right now), I’m going to focusing on a tiny drop in the vast ocean of issues relating to waste, in the universe of sustainability. Not straws this time, but teabags.
I recently found out that tea bags are made of plastic. Top tea manufacturers such as Tetley, PG Tips, Twinnings, Clipper and Typhoo make tea bags made of a mix of hemp, wood pulp, and heat-resistant polypropylene (a plastic). Most people chuck these lil’ buggers into their compost bins and carriers, and if not sieved out will end up dispersed in the soil never to decompose, pissing off gardeners who have to deal with them and probably a bunch of other living organisms that have to deal with the rubbish *if I knew what a confused worm looked like I would insert here*. And if you sieve them out, what do you do with them anyway? You can’t recycle them, and it’s just one more item to add to the never-ending list of shit produced by our throw-away culture to end up in landfill or burned in an incinerator, negatively affecting the soil or air, respectively.
This got me thinking. The first thing that popped into my mind was “just buy loose tea, instead”. Ahhh. Easy and safe option. I can carry on in my main role as a consumer, sitting on my imaginary eco-warrior throne sipping my tea. This is just ONE approach to the “sustainable solution”. But things are more complicated than this.
Why on earth am I JUST focusing on the tea bag and the plastic? Each tea bag is linked to
the soil where the tea is grown is probably contributing to soil depletion and taking up room from what could have been a forest.
the profits of the company that employs *cough, exploits* the people picking the tea leaves
the livelihood and day-to-day lives of the people picking these leaves so that I can drink a cuppa and me not dedicating even a second to think of them, let alone thank them.
the extraction of all the materials needed to make the tea bag: more trees for wood pulp and hemp which could otherwise be forests, oil for plastic…
the production of cutting up and drying the tea leaves, the production of the tea bags
transport of resources and final product
the packaging and publicity all these companies will spend money and resources on
THE LIST IS ENDLESS… this tea bag is connected to the rest of the world!!! As Hopwood, Mellor and O'Brien (2005) would say: In broad terms, the concept of sustainable development is an attempt to combine growing concerns about a range of environmental issues with socio-economic issues.
This is where sustainability gets tricky. If something is to be truly sustainable, it should be good for me, others, and the planet, and be able to sustain itself in the long-run. Most things we do fuck up at least one of the these.
So, what is the most sustainable thing I could do when it comes to my tea conundrum? If I buy loose tea, but still disregard the tea-pickers lives, wages, the environmental effects of the transport and production- is this really still a sustainable solution? The truth is there is no straightforward answer. The answer would depends on what I value or depend on, and the restraints of the reality of the situation (e.g. I’m not going to grow my own tea).
If I asked a zero-waste store to answer my tea conundrum question, they would probably suggest buying loose tea from them. If I asked a group of exploited tea-pickers they would probably say to put pressure on tea companies to establish much better working conditions (someone should actually ask them!), others may say to drink something that is grown in my own country, maybe nettle tea. If I asked a gardener, they may suggest me having an attempt at growing my own tea in my garden. Honestly, there is an infinite number of answers, and an infinite opportunity to ask the question over, and over again, to learn more and more about all the ways this tea bag is connected to the rest of the world and ourselves.
That’s pretty much all we can do- carry on questioning - am I fully taking into account people, planet, and myself, in my actions?, learning and accepting the fact that we are hypocrites when it comes to sustainability. Always question the answer you arrive to, as the “final” answer doesn’t exist, and ask yourself what value your belief is based on.
I’ll finish this post with an awesome video a friend sent to me which outlines two different broad approaches to the sustainable development debate- which one do you identify more with in this moment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WAvbYbUlNs&t=231s