Probably the main reason I don't use Lipton instead of the good stuff when I'm making cold brew is that I dislike all the packaging waste. Between the brewing method and the serving temperature, I don't necessarily find the taste alone to be enough better to justify the higher price.
By contrast, the tea dust that Lipton uses is the leftovers when all the higher-grade roasted whole leaves have been taken out, and it's quite literally the worst/cheapest grade:
This is a farm I quite like. They're high quality and not a terrible price point since your buying directly from the farmer without a middleman.
unique pillow-style tea bag that doesn't need a string, tag, staple or individual wrapper—and as a result, we save 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills every year.
Assuming the tea actually sells
Do the 'pillow-style tea bag's use plastic?
Anecdotally, my mother has been drinking Celestial Seasons for as long as I can remember (i.e. 20-25 years), and at any given time has maybe a half dozen to a dozen boxes of various types of it. Given that I grew up drinking it, tea bags with a string and tag have always been super weird to me.
> Do the 'pillow-style tea bag's use plastic?
Based solely on appearance/texture, they seem to me like they're some type of paper or light fabric, but it might be made from plastic.
Our tea bags are manufactured through a totally chlorine-free (TCF) process, meaning that no dioxin is released into the environment. Plus, they never contain starch or gluten, and they're completely biodegradable and compostable—making them better for you and for our planet.
"On packaging, it’s important for you to know that our tea bag paper is made of a blend of natural, chlorine-free fibers, and does not contain epichlorohydrin."
The sentence comes off as a little evasive. It would have been better if they said exactly what the bags are made of. It seems reasonable to conclude they are plastic-free but I don't think you can be 100% sure unless it's explicitly stated.
I believe Celestial is in every Walmart, that must be quite a bit of volume.
3.5 million pounds? Of tiny strings and staples? Wouldn't that require literally billions of teabags to reach 3.5 million pounds saved?
Anecdotally, certain fancy tea bags survived an 18 month composting cycle, which I had to then pluck out by hand before spreading said compost on my vegie patch.
Be kind to worms!
I recently used some Lipton yellow label, though, and that was terrible. There's absolutely variation in quality, even among bagged tea.