Eco Lesbo Vego

Reuse: Tea Bags

I’m Australian and I drink tea. All kinds. My favourite is rooibos and I also quite like green. Sometimes the girls at work will bring in some special blends (the last ones had black, green and rose, and rooibos, green and orange peel). If I’m stressed I drink chamomile. Jasmine and chrysanthemum are good too, and peppermint or lemon if I’ve got a cold. There’s a tea for every occasion. I only drink my tea with water – no sugar, no soy or oat milk.

Nerada's Rooibos with vanilla is my favourite kind of tea

Tea is a hot drink and the weather is getting cooler, so I’ll be drinking more and more of it as the year goes on, but that doesn’t matter really – here in Australia, we drink it year round.

You can get tea that doesn’t involve tea bags – loose leaf and things like that – but typically, I use tea bags. I don’t drink enough to worry about making a pot, and the mesh tea balls aren’t ideal for someone who typically brews tea in a hurry. The tea bags are kind of wasteful though, so I like to reuse them.

At work, my colleague and I make a cup of tea each using the same tea bag. At home, I put my used tea bag into a clean glass and set it aside on the bench to save for use in my next cup of tea, and sometimes the next after that. I don’t leave it too long though, or I think it would get manky. Sometimes Yankee Elv and I, and sometimes Mr Teeny-bop, share tea bags, but mostly we drink different kinds of tea so the glass of tea bags is well used. I guess you could put it in a glass jar with the lid on, but I don’t think it would be good to contain the moisture too much, and especially not for too long.

You can reuse the tea bags in other ways too. Cool, they are soothing on (closed) tired eyes. Apparently a chamomile tea bag is very soothing on freshly pierced skin and scars. And after you’ve finished with your tea bags, you can compost them, or even put them into your worm farm if you have one. They’re only paper and leaves – but be sure to buy local and organic (so I choose Nerada) if you can.

February 25, 2009 at 12:54 am 3 comments