Green Living Tips
Reusing Tea Bags
Since the time unknown, tea has been used not only as a beverage to help one relax from stress, tea leaves are also known to have medicinal properties that cure headache, cold, and even diarrhea. Today, tea is more of an urban beverage that has transcended its domain from being a fine dining serving to a menu item at the fast food restaurants.
Anything from the casual ice tea to the innovative tea Sunday, there is a horde of tea mutations available for all the tea lovers. While there are numerous ways to enjoy the delectable flavor of tea, using tea bags is undoubtedly amongst the widely used techniques. However the extensive usage of teabags has a drawback too, since it forms a significant part a significant part of the kitchen waste. Quite evidently the idea of reusing teabags works well for the environment as well some costs for regular tea drinkers.
An age old habit for some, reusing teabags has its own benefits and frequent users swear by them. No, if you are thinking that teabags are manufactured to be used one time only and are essentially disposable, you are completely wrong. If you have not tried having tea made by reusing your tea bags, you will be amazed to ‘not’ feel the deference!
You may be thinking, ‘if it were such a good thing, why is this phenomenon catching up now?’ Well, the answer to that is pretty simple, a few decades ago, when the concept of tea bags was catching up, people as well as tea manufacturing companies thought it would be nice to pack teabags with powered tea leaves to increase absorption in the hot water. Even though this method worked, it led tea lovers asking for more as the real aroma of tea leaves got lost somewhere in the process of preparing tea for the tea bags. Contrary to the teabags that were available a while ago, tea bags have see a revolutionary change as now tea manufacturers are also selling tea bags filled with high quality tea leaves rolled-up perfectly to facilitate absorption and maintain a good flavor too.
As you all might have guessed, the gourmet tea bags that we get today contain tea leaves and not powdered tea. As tea leaves contain the flavor from within their structure, they are perfectly fine for reuse and make perfect tea the second time too. Believe it or not, these reused tea bags have the same flavor, medicinal value and taste as compared to fresh tea bags.
While tea manufacturers will not promote the whole idea of reducing the teabags as it would affect their product sale and in turn affect their profits, the idea is becoming popular by word of mouth or by simple self experimentation.
For those who have not yet picked up the practice of reusing teabags, given below are two of the most important reasons why you should reuse tea bags.
* Using a single tea bag for as many as 2-3 tea preparations is highly economical
* Allows you to use expensive gourmet tea bags more than once and thus, take the full health benefit of tea.
