According to a study conducted in Canada, 11.6 billion microplastic particles and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles leak into the water in just one cup when plastic tea bags are steeped for 5 minutes in water heated to 95°C. This means that we are exposed to thousands of times more plastic than other food products.
Another study in Australia found that people ingest about 5 grams of plastic per week, equivalent to the size and weight of a credit card.
Within the scope of Plastic-Free July 2024 activities, IMU Sustainability Club collaborated with Lazika Çay to move people away from single-use plastic packaged teas and to promote the use of sustainably packaged teas and brewed teas. For this purpose, our students from the Sustainability Club and our Sustainability Office team visited the offices and social areas at Göztepe North Campus on July 03, 2024 to provide information about the environmental pollution and health threats posed by plastic tea bags and offered our campus community teas produced according to the principles of sustainability from seed to cup. Thanks to this collaboration, 1,500 cups of tea consumed by our campus Club in July were consumed waste-free.
During the event, the project’s academic advisors explained to all participants that the research results show that tea brewed for 5 minutes in water heated to 95° leaches out 11.6 billion microplastic particles and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles in a cup. According to these data, it was pointed out that by drinking only tea, people take in about 5 g of plastic per week, which is approximately the size and weight of a credit card.
As the Lazika team points out, the history of tea bags dates back to a mistake made in 1908. A merchant named Thomas Sullivan sent the tea leaves in silk bags to reduce the cost and these were supposed to be opened and brewed by throwing into water. Under normal conditions, these bags should have been cut on the edges and the tea should have been taken into the teapot, but the buyers brewed the tea in these bags. Thus, tea bags were accidentally discovered and their use became widespread thanks to their practicality. However, since it is a valuable material, the search for different materials to replace silk in the production of tea bags has continued and many materials have been tried. The most commonly used materials with a silky appearance were food grade nylon or polyethylene terephthalate (PET). However, although PET has a melting point of approximately 250°C, research has shown that it begins to break down at much lower temperatures. At this point, new searches for sustainable tea consumption have emerged. The most well-known of these are paper filters, muslin and PLA materials. Paper filters are not preferred due to their opaque structure, as they do not show the inside and therefore the quality of the tea, while muslin bags increase the cost. At this point, sustainable producers have started using a new material to achieve a silky appearance and offer a healthy tea consumption: Polylactic acid (PLA). PLA, a biopolymer also used in the bags of Lazika teas, is obtained from corn cobs. So it is a compostable material. This means that when you use these tea bags, you will not mix microplastics into the tea you drink, and you will not leave any plastic waste behind after drinking your tea.
Stating that Turkey is the country that consumes the most tea according to the research results, the project team pointed out that according to these results, 9 out of every 10 people in Turkey consume tea regularly. Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK from the project team explained the importance of the social responsibility project with the following words: “This collaboration to make the tea that people drink plastic-free is especially important for us. Changing consumer behavior is the first step towards a plastic-free and sustainable life; however, changing habits can be difficult. In Turkey, a person consumes an average of 3.16kg of tea per year. One tea bag is approximately 2gr. In other words, this value roughly corresponds to 1,580 tea bags and 80 boxes per year. If plastic-containing products continue to be used in tea consumption, we will see significant health problems and piles of plastic waste. Therefore, we invited our campus community to make this change in order to protect our own health as well as our soil and water resources.”
In addition, ÇELİKBİLEK stated that the social responsibility project they developed for sustainable tea is not only about reducing the amount of plastic waste, but also about sustainable cities and communities: “Tea is an indispensable part of Turkish culture. It is an important component of daily rituals, hospitality, social interaction and relaxation. In our country, not only black tea, but also sage, linden, rosehip, thyme, chamomile, French lavender, apple, marshmallow plant and many other plants that are the products of the unique biodiversity offered by Anatolian geography are brewed. The practices for brewing and drinking each variety of tea has been passed down through generations and traditional methods have been preserved. These traditional methods, the samovars and the way the tea is served in small, tulip-shaped cups, are a distinctive feature of Anatolian culture and differ from tea traditions in other regions. As a symbol of identity, hospitality and social interaction, tea culture was added to the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity List by UNESCO in 2022. Therefore, another aim of our project is to ensure the sustainability of the culture”.
Furkan ERUÇAR, President of IMUSUS, stated that Turkey is the country with the highest number of items registered in the intangible cultural heritage lists and that the important thing is to protect this heritage and pass it on to future generations. Underlining that both IMU Sustainability Office and IMUSUS have developed many projects to protect intangible cultural heritage and raise awareness about these cultures in the public, ERUÇAR stated that the project carried out not only aims to conserve the tea culture, but also reveals its unifying power. He continued as follows: “At the Sustainability Office, we offer tea, an important element of Turkish culture, to our guests both at our events and during their visits. The round table events accompanied by tea also allow us to hold discussions on sustainability and develop new projects and collaborations.”
Seray SARI from the Lazika team drew attention to the fact that not only the packaging of the final product, but also all agricultural production and supply processes, including the production and collection processes of the product, must be fair, ethical and sustainable in order to keep this heritage alive and transfer it to future generations. At this point, she stated that they will implement permaculture in tea starting this year in order to enrich the soil in the sustainable tea farming practices they carry out in Elmalık Village. After pointing out that tea is also an important economic resource for Anatolian lands, she informed that they are trying to be a role model to ensure the sustainability of our soil, culture and economic development.
Similarly, IMU Sustainability Office is also trying to be a role model for a waste-free and sustainable life, and in this regard, they meet with Lazika on a common ground. Zehra SAVAN expressed the importance of the project as follows: “In the effort to live in a sustainable world, sometimes people can avoid change by saying ‘what will change only with my effort’. For this reason, we designed our Plastic-Free July events to inform people about plastic waste and its effects while initiating a change. At this point, we offered people the opportunity to experience sustainable products with the free products provided by our sponsors. During the Plastic-Free July events, we hosted approximately 50 visitors daily at the Sustainability Office. With this collaboration with Lazika, we offered 1,500 cups of sustainable tea to our guests throughout the month. As a result of this change, we prevented approximately 250 credit card equivalent of microplastics from accumulating in the bodies of our campus community, which means preventing 1,250g of microplastics simply by changing our tea drinking habits in a month.”
The month-long event organized within the scope of Plastic-Free July was carried out completely waste-free in line with the zero waste policy, which is one of the leading corporate social responsibility policies of our University. The project team stated that in addition to preventing microplastics from entering people’s bodies with sustainable tea bags, all the waste generated after drinking tea is organic waste and about 3kg of organic waste is composted with the work carried out by the Sustainability Office on campus. It was stated that the cardboard boxes of the teas will be used in the “Upcycling Art” project carried out by IMUSUS.
The “Plastic-Free July” social responsibility project, which has been managed by the IMU Sustainability Office since 2022, was carried out by the IMU Sustainability Club this year. The academic consultancy of the project was undertaken by Res.Asst. Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK from the IMU Sustainability Office team, who is also the academic advisor of IMU Sustainability Club, the Club president Res.Asst. Furkan ERUÇAR and Lect. Zehra SAVAN.
Within the scope of the 2024 activities of the “Plastic-Free July” project, IMU Sustainability Club (IMUSUS) invited people to challenge them to remove a single-use plastic product they use in their daily lives every day for a month and step into a plastic-free life. During the challenge, environmental awareness was raised by providing information about the waste generation and environmental pollution caused by these plastic products every day through social media accounts. Following each of these informative social media posts, people were presented with sustainable alternatives with natural ingredients and packaging that do not produce plastic waste, which they could use instead of that plastic-containing product. IMUSUS also collaborated with 18 companies in Turkey and the world that are pioneers in sustainability and have sustainable product labels in order to carry this awareness to consumer behavior. Thanks to this cooperation, on certain days of the challenge, with the sponsorship support provided by the companies, sustainable products were presented to both our students and staff and the public in order to create a new behavioral change in their daily lives. Thus, while enabling people to take the first step towards a plastic-free life, it also contributed to reducing the amount of single-use plastic waste and the environmental footprint of our campus community.
The “Plastic-Free July” movement has been celebrated around the world since 2011, challenging people to eliminate single-use plastic products from their lives by raising awareness about plastic pollution and the amount of plastic they use.
Sources: https://www.lazika.com.tr/blog/icerik/poset-caylar-nereden-nereye
https://www.lazika.com.tr/blog/icerik/anadoluda-cay-kulturu-ve-cayin-onemi https://www.trthaber.com/haber/saglik/en-fazla-cay-tuketen-ulke-turkiye-756496.html
