There are tons of companies that have tea bags made out of biodegradable materials such as tree bark. Or if you don’t have access, consider a metal steeper and loose tea. Unbelievable the stuff people just shove in their gullet with no inspection.
Now whether or not they actually do a good job at that task is a different question.
It's unfortunate that you'd expect millions of people to individually "do research" (i.e. consult their crystal-stroking astrologist nutjob friend on Facebook). There is no reasonable way for individuals to make informed decisions regarding each individual item they may eat.
The Good Place has a great little clip about just the difficulty of buying a tomato: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8m_5HDZF7w
However if the country is going to be based on lobbying efforts you better damn well be able to do a little research.
There is a reasonable way to make informed decisions. It starts with skepticism and not just shoving food into your face because it’s popular.
Dreamy looks in the distance while difficult questions are being answered, precise estimations based on looks and tons of furious googling happening among the isles for each of the 113 items bought that day. And then realizing 109 of those are somehow interacting with plastics anyway, and there is nothing better in the shop.
People have too much on their plate to grind their lives to halt for 1 out of too many worries just for groceries.
If you want to take the approach where you buy a bunch of stuff and then sit down for hours auditing everything you spent money on, then that’s on you. Consider that if the issue is so extensive you can do the analysis piecemeal if paranoia of it all causes you to be exhausted.
Or don’t wait for reports like this and a politicized regulatory agency in the age of hysteria to make the decisions for you.
You're asking a consumer to do what a regulatory institution should do.
We all are cattle to institutions. Maybe you're someone that fact-checks the FDA's science, but do you also fact-check the Dept of Ed's pedagogy, or the federal reserve's fiscal policy?
We need strong institutions that act in the interests of the average citizen. You're right that we don't have that now, but fixing broken institutions is more realistic than everyone becoming genius polymaths with infinite free time for research.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/the...
They’ve done that in this case, and have reasonably concluded that the tea bags are made of paper and are therefore safe. Fuck them for being wrong I guess?