What Makes for Sustainable Teas?

Part II of the Gaian Guide to Liquids

Some time ago, I wrote an off-the-cuff guide to the best beverages for Gaians to drink. Essentially it recommended avoiding the high eco-impact, unhealthy beverages like soda and milks (whether of the udder or nut varietals) as much as possible. One of the simplest, healthiest and most sustainable drinks to choose is plants infused in hot water (tea)—probably why we’ve drunk these since we first invented fire.¹

Teas are incredibly good for you. And sustainable too. They just require a bit of hot water (which could be fueled by the sun directly or indirectly) and a bit of plant material. Many of these you can forage in your yard, garden, or neighborhood: red clover, mint, sage, lemon balm, mugwort, raspberry leaf, linden flowers, pine needles, spice bush, etc. Of course, the nitpicker will note these herbal teas are actually tisanes.² True, and, assuming you don’t live in a tea-growing region, they’re the most healthful and sustainable options—as there is no packaging, shipping, or plantations involved. But what about actual tea, of the black, white, and green varieties (and the tisanes that do not grow near you, like rooibos)—how do we choose the most sustainable of these?

As I wrote this in a café in Tbilisi (where I spent the last month), captivated by all the smells, sights, and tastes of a more alive food culture than my engineered/plastic-encased American one, I started researching sustainable tea, inspired by a trip to a tea museum around the corner from my temporary home.

Giorgi, who runs the Bitadze Tea Museum and comes from a family of tea producers, gave a great little history of tea production—particularly in Georgia, which turns out used to be the key production hub for tea in the Soviet Union. When the USSR collapsed, tea production faltered, with most of the plantations and production facilities falling into disrepair. Slowly over time, Georgia has been redeveloping its production of tea—though for context, the country currently produces about 2,000 tons a year (according to Giorgi). Compare this to the 30 million tons produced globally in 2022 and the 150,000 tons produced in Georgia at peak-production in the mid-1980s. Even at its peak, Georgia wasn’t a major producer, but it was producing 75 times its current yield.

My encounter with Giorgi got me thinking: what makes for sustainable tea? There are countless words written on sustainable coffee—from it being shade-grown to fair-trade—but much less on the monocropped tea plantations around India, China, Kenya, and Georgia too.³ Ultimately, I think it boils down (yuk yuk) to a few key variables: the tea (how it’s grown and processed); how it’s moved; how it’s packaged; how it’s distributed; and how it’s sold.

How it’s grown

This entails the obvious elements: organic (sans pesticides), sustaining healthy soils, etc. but just like with coffee, it turns out tea can be shade grown and integrated into a healthy diverse ecosystem. The Georgians are actually growing what they call “wild tea.” Technically, more of a feral tea, as this tea comes from plants that kept growing after the collapse. Other species of plants and trees grew up around these tea bushes and the bushes are now embedded in an ecosystem rather than a monocropped plantation. Of course, this means a lot less tea can be produced, but the land is surely a lot more alive and supportive of a diverse ecology of plants, insects and animals. (Theoretically, some other productive plants could be woven into this ecosystem as well, permaculture style, but currently the land is left wild and locals are hired to glean tea sustainably from the land.)⁴

Interestingly, Georgian tea plantations also sounded more sustainable, in part because of their smaller production. Keeping annual production to just four tons of fresh tea each year per hectare instead of the typical 12 tons means no chemical fertilizers are needed to supplement the soil and instead they can use compost made from tea (after a long effort to cultivate Georgian worms who like to eat composted tea leaves, which didn’t sound easy!).

Beyond how the tea is grown are several other factors: how workers are treated (including being paid fairly);⁵ how the tea is actually produced, for example, what fuels the roasting, the heating, the lighting, the machinery; building safety and sustainability, and so on.⁶

How it’s shipped

As for shipping, that’s self-explanatory though currently limited in how to influence. There are a few wind-powered shipping vessels (and they’re tiny), and some cargo ships are adding state-of-the-art wind wings (or high-tech sails), which reduce tons of carbon from fuel use each day. However, these are still pilot efforts, with most shipping companies at best using slightly less unsustainable fuels—like methanol—or aspiring to do so at some future date. So again, yard- or neighborhood-based tisanes are hands-down the best tea you’re going to drink, from a carbon emissions and broader environmental perspective.

How it’s packaged

Now onto packaging. Some time back, I wrote about the horrors of the plastic tea bag. How it can release billions of microplastic particles into your tea. Even paper tea bags can be coated or sealed with plastic, thus loose leaf—like local—is always going to be best (also as no trees were harmed in the making of your tea—unless of course it’s sassafras tea…).

I also recently discovered that the hot to go cup may be just as malicious. Starbucks recently introduced a new silica-coated to go cup—yes, the stuff in those little packets labeled “Do Not Eat.” Supposedly, the silica is not toxic and will do a good job in preventing the paper from degrading from the hot liquid and will then be compostable at the end of its life. I guess that’s a good thing (assuming there are no other side effects and assuming you live in one of the nine European countries where they’ve been introduced), but the bigger story is that the current to go cup releases about 25,000 microplastic particles into your drink in about 15 minutes.⁷ Worse, analysis found heavy metals found in the plastic liners also leeched into one’s drink. Like with the plastic tea bag, I naively assumed that no government regulatory agency would allow the active poisoning of its citizens (probably to allow for my continuing enjoyment of an impromptu coffee or tea). But that’s simply not true. We all know, from an environmental perspective, that we should never buy a disposable cup. Now, it’s clear we’re not just poisoning Earth, but ourselves. So, drink your tea only in a mug or your own travel mug.

How it’s sold

Finally, how you buy your tea matters. That includes not just buying your tea from a local producer, or from a sustainable tea company for home use, but which café you visit. There are real differences: a local shop that does a lot to care for the community versus a profit-oriented chain, a chain that has a clear plan to improve coffee and tea production and become net-zero, vs. one that doesn’t. There are clear indicators with which one can make better choices.⁸ Consumer power is limited (and not the way we’re going to get to a sustainable future) but the consumer influence we do have, we should wield it well.

So, that’s more than enough about teas. The bottom line: Next time you reach for a warm, soothing drink: Choose a local tisane, loose leaf and even home grown if possible, and never, ever use plastic tea bags or plastic to go cups. Your body and the planetary body we’re all part of will thank you for it!

Endnotes

1) That’d be my guess. And perhaps even longer. I would not be surprised if certain herbs were put in standing water to prevent pathogens (whether microscopic or mosquito larvae) from growing, which gently flavored the water.

2) Tea is actually a tisane too, using tea leaves. Weird that this would get its own special category. As with Kleenex in the U.S. being a proxy for tissues, Hoover in the UK representing vacuums, and Pampers in the former Soviet Union representing diapers (go figure!), tea has commandeered the term. So I suggest we take it back. All teas are tisanes, and you know what, nitpickers, tisanes are teas too.

3) Below is a map of tea growing areas around the world. Note the areas. As an American, I’m a bit surprised there isn’t a small band somewhere where the U.S. can grow tea. But searching this, I do see tea can be, and is being, grown in the U.S. Though it’s just a small plantation in South Carolina. Perhaps this is a future crop to incorporate into permaculture forest gardens to prepare for the inevitable disruptions in global trade….

4) A very interesting aside about that. Giorgi’s family tea operation grows blueberry plants, quince and apple trees and makes teas from these leaves, adding even more options to the tisanes I already listed. As Giorgi noted as we chatted, “Herbal tea is for some goal. Once you achieve that goal you should rest.” A good point—I’d have to research more, particularly why that doesn’t apply to tea and coffee (or does it?). But drinking a diversity of teas, especially when so many plants abound that are tea-able, makes sense. Just listen to what your body craves, and that might also guide one’s choice.

5) In Georgia, for example, there is a Georgian Organic Tea Producers Association that compiles teas from several tea farmers and helps provide education and marketing support.

6) I could go on and on here, but will instead point to a recent cocoa farming effort by Nestle. There are many opportunities to pay fairly, empower, and support workers. And lots of ways factories can reduce their impacts, through design, renewable energy, co-generation, etc. These types of efforts should be standard, and with pressure on companies to reduce climate and biodiversity impacts (and abuse of workers’ rights), some companies have taken action. Of course, even the best company is going to make tradeoffs and have impacts, hence again, yard- and neighborhood-based teas can never be beat.

7) This number seems way low if bags are releasing particles in the billions. One would need to investigate the methodologies of the many different studies to get a better sense of total releases. But truthfully any microplastic contamination is too much, and any way to minimize it is valuable, particularly considering how much we can’t avoid.

8) So much more to write about that. Does the café serve as a local Third Place, drive local social change, etc. Fortunately, I grappled with some of those questions and ideas in this essay back in 2008!