We have been All About organic and recycling, from Day ONE, spending the extra $ to buy compostable and recyclable wherever we could.
We have never been thrilled with using the gold bags (or red, black, or green, or silver….), and I’m told the PLA lined kraft bags are only marginally better environmentally. However, for economy and keeping tea fresh longer – these have been our best option. To sell tea in tins made the items more expensive for both you and me. To sell in paper bags does not preserve the freshness of the tea, thus leading to a different kind of waste.
With our storefront we were able to offer Fill YOUR packaging (or refill ours), and that is the Best option. However, that is not always convenient for various reasons.
FINALLY – we have the Next best option – TERRACYCLE and we are Super Excited about this.
Starting NOW, you can return All your Empty tea bags to us and we will send them to Terra Cycle so they can turn them into something else useful. [Please Only return Traveling Tea packaging. Much as we would love to give wholesale support to your recycling efforts, this costs us a decent bit of $ to offer and we need to limit the service.]
Check out Terra Cycle’s website for other items You can recycle at your home or business. Their customer support is very responsive in answering questions. I checked into their business by running it past EarthDay365 as well and got their acknowledgement that this is For Real. [It is my understanding that Subaru has a recycling drop off box in their showroom as well, for all kinds of things – In fact, I found out about Terra Cycle because of Subaru’s participation in Earth Day’s Recycling Extravaganza]
Please continue to Reduce consumption and Reuse whenever possible – but when you cannot, RECYCLE.