Tea is my favourite beverage. Period.
Why drink water when you can drink tea?
Black tea, white tea, green tea, chai, kombucha, tisanes.
Made properly from quality leaves, not sweet, milk in my hot black tea please.
Several times a day, every day.
I started experimenting with coffee recently, grinding freshly roasted, bird-friendly beans and steeping them like tea in a French press. A little sugar and cream please...delicious!
Our daily indulgences, including tea, coffee, chocolate and sugar, can come at a great cost. Low wages, slavery, child labour, limited access to education, poor working and housing conditions, use of dangerous chemicals and ecological disruption are some major production issues. Pesticide traces in some teas exceed recommended limits which matters more for people like me who consume it frequently.
Fortunately, we can take small steps to improve the lives of people in countries that produce these products and also decrease our exposure to harmful chemicals. Awareness is the first step.
The Ethical Tea Partnership website states that they are creating a fairer, better, more sustainable tea industry -for tea workers, farmers, and the environment. Their current partners are listed here and include many of the popular tea brands.
I have purchased Dilmah tea recently because of their commitment to ethical production practices. It is available in specialty shops in our city and online. I also order organic loose tea from Tealyra. It is hard to go back to teabags once you use full-bodied tea leaves. I truly do not understand why tea and coffee pods are so popular. Besides the expense and waste, the tea and coffee is low quality and heated plastic disrupts our hormonal balance.
Join me at the dock, early in the morning for my next pot of really good tea.
Love this! I tend to be a coffee drinker, but you've got me hankering for a good cuppa tea with some milk in it...
ReplyDeleteThis post is such a teas!
ReplyDeleteThe pun part of my brain never developed. :-)
DeleteWhew--I was beginning to think no one thought "beverage" a suitable topic!
ReplyDeleteTea--one of the first beverages I learned to love. And even now, it remains a favorite. Coffee--another favorite. But my personal beverage choice..well, you'll just have to wait until I write it.
I've never been much of a hot tea person, though I love an occasional cup of herbal tea. This may make me try something different.
ReplyDeleteIf I grew up where you are, Jayne, I would be drinking iced tea. It just doesn't go with our climate.
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