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KellyCriterion 3 hours ago

Wait, WHAT?

There are _plastic_ tea bags? Really?

Didnt know that we reached that level of degredation already! :-D

Another example comes to my mind: In lot of European conutries, at "cheese corner/bar" in the supermarket, every time a piece of cheese is cut, they are removing the foil, cutting the cheese, and then re-packing it in new foil after that - and this for every chees bar in every supermarket: How much kilometers does just one branch waste per year?

schiffern 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The kicker? It's only on high-end tea, because it's more expensive than regular tea bags.

KellyCriterion 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Curious: What is "high end tea"? Or is this just another wording for "premium-markup" which makes a product more expensive?

schiffern 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes I just mean the more expensive tea on the shelf. On cheaper SKUs they're trying to cut cost so they use normal tea bags. The plastic sachets were a trend for a couple years but hopefully most brands have switched away.

That study is interesting because they used SEM to image the plastic afterward, and you can see how the plastic surface has literally been torn up on a microscopic level simply by touching hot water.

Plastic has a low-energy surface, which means it doesn't take much energy to tear it apart. Even Brownian motion is enough, which is pretty wild.

KellyCriterion an hour ago | parent [-]

Thanks for threwing this ball, so let me ask:

Is there any real difference between the more expensive shelf places ("on eye height") than the more cheap one?

Id suspect its just intelligent re-labelling/re-packing for different brands?

Or is there really a difference in the quality/taste of the expensive ones?

In my country, it doesnt matter if i spend 2 bucks or 5 bucks in the supermarket

senectus1 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

all the high end tea bags I've seen are silk