By Cinda Chavich
Silk Road Tea master Daniela Cubelic set out to create the perfect tea bag and worked with a Japanese company to develop equipment to make it possible. You can now buy Silk Road Tea in these compostable, chemical free tea bags.
With tea touted as one of the world’s healthiest beverages, it’s disconcerting to learn that many tea bags are leaching microplastics into their daily cuppa. According to a recent study by a research team at McGill University, premium teas, packaged in fancy silk-like bags, release billions of tiny plastic particles when steeped in hot water. It may be enough to put you off your organic Earl Grey, but there’s good news for local tea lovers.
When Silk Road tea master Daniela Cubelic set out to find the perfect tea bag for her premium loose black, green and herbal teas, she wanted something natural, 100-per-cent compostable, chemical free and able to draw the most flavour from the tea it enclosed.
No such tea bag existed in the market, so Cubelic spent a decade in research, eventually settling on a pyramid-shaped bag, made from plant fibre, the first such tea bag in North America. She worked with a Japanese company to develop equipment to bag teas without damaging the leaves.
Always one to go the extra mile, Cubelic also ensured none of Silk Road’s tea bag packaging contains plastic. It’s all compostable, including the outer wrap, (made of cellulose with water-based inks), the tea bag and the string for plastic-free tea time.
This article is from the March/April 2020 issue of YAM