Invented around 1908, it fundamentally changed our drinking habits - the teabag. But it wasn't actually 'invented.' The teabag was an accident rather than design. A New York tea merchant, John Sullivan, started sending tea to customers in small silken packets for convenience. Many of his customers, thinking they were intended to be convenient infusions, placed them in their teapot. The teabag was born. Sullivan went on to make the bags from gauze, making them more suitable for infusion, and their use swept across the USA. In 1953, Tetley introduced the teabag to tea drinkers in the United Kingdom, where now they are used in 96% of tea consumption. So, what are they? Here the story is both environmentally good and potentially bad. Not all tea bags are made of the same stuff. Many tea bags are made with added plastic, which is neither biodegradable nor recyclable. Some types of teabag leak millions of plastic particles ...
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