• doublenut@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Are we sure thats not the commonly used silk tea bag? Why do we think this is plastic?

    • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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      8 months ago

      Silk is expensive. Almost all pyramidal tea bags are nylon and/or polyester (at least in the US). Only premium stuff is going to be made of silk and they’ll advertise it as such

    • Barttier@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

      They are from polylactid and decompose without a trace and without microplastic. Paper tea bags on the other hand often contain around 20% polypropylene and cause microplastic.

      • zik@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Despite claims to the contrary, PLA does usually break down into microplastics. It’s possible that under certain conditions (such as those found in industrial composters) those microplastics might be broken down into starches and consumed by bacteria, but most teabags will just end up in landfill and won’t break down beyond microplastics.

        • evranch@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          These microplastics are digestible by your immune system, though, which makes them ultimately harmless. PLA is used for drug delivery for this reason.

          Being concerned about incomplete PLA degradation is like being concerned about a piece of wood breaking down into micro-woods. Yet even if you get a dangerous shard of micro-wood embedded in your skin, your body can deal with this cellose polymer just fine.

          Ultimately it will break down completely someday and in the meantime, nothing will be harmed.

        • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          If it’s at least possible for those micro plastics to be broken down, would it really matter if they don’t break down ina landfill? Either they stay in the landfill forever causing no problems or they leach out / blow away outside of the landfill and voila, proper conditions to be broken down into starches and consumed by bacteria.

          • zik@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            They don’t break down completely in landfill. They just turn into microplastics.