We’ve been blown away by the support received since the launch of CoopTea™. We have joined forces with The Food Hub in Belgium, a cooperative distributing the tea around north west Europe and serving it in their market stores. It is being distributed by Glasgow’s Green City Coop, and in all of the cafes our cooperative services here in England and Wales.
By August, we estimate that over 120,500 CoopTea bags will have been brewed and drunk across Great Britain and Europe. Not bad going for their first 9 months!
So how much plastic waste will this save?
A standard tea bag contains around 0.04g of plastic. This is usually used to heat seal the bag, but it’s also a cheaper material to produce with and is favoured by large companies due to the cost saving. By comparison, our tea bags contain exactly 0.00g of plastic.
If we multiply the predicted number of bags drunk (125,000) by the total amount of plastic in a standard bag (0.04g), we arrive at a total plastic saving of 4820g since August 2020.
This is a conservative estimate, as each box is entirely recyclable and wrapped in a biodegradable shrink wrap (compared to the normal plastic cellophane). With that factored in, it starts to look more like a saving of 10,000g since August