Why Drink Loose-Leaf Tea? Value, Quality, Sustainability

Tea bags - cost per cup:

A typical box of tea bags in the supermarket costs around $3 for a box of 20 tea bags, which amounts to 15 cents a cup. High-end brands like Two Leaves and a Bud or Mighty Leaf cost much more, running around $8-$9 for as few as 15 sachets. This is over 50 cents a cup.

Loose-leaf tea - cost per cup:

A pound of tea will typically brew 200-250 cups of tea, depending on the strength you like. These calculations are based on using the generous amount of 2.5 grams of tea per cup, a little more than a teaspoon of typical teas--which is enough for a strong cup.  For reference, many teabags use as little as 1.4 grams of leaf.

The typical cost for good-quality loose-leaf tea is around $5-$8 for about 1/4 pound of tea, which is between 100 and 125 grams (many companies also sell in grams). This works out to be between 10 and 15 cents per cup. But these teas tend to be comparable in quality to the 50-cent-per-cup teas above. Artisan teas (which are not typically available in tea bags) can cost up to $20 for the same quantity, but this is still less than 50 cents per cup. When buying in bulk, it is possible to get strong black teas of good quality for as low as $7 a pound. This costs less than 3 cents per cup!

Loose tea is much cheaper than tea bags! If you switched from $3 for 20 tea bags to $7 for a pound of loose-leaf tea, and you drank 3 cups of tea a day, you'd save over $130 a year.  For families, offices, or people drinking huge amounts of tea, you could save much more.

Brewing loose tea is easy, and there are many different methods that can help you do so. One of the most convenient and universal ways to brew loose-leaf tea: a basket infuser. A basket infuser is a mesh filter that sits inside a mug or teapot. You place the tea leaves in the basket, place the basket inside the mug, and pour the water over the leaves. When you're ready to drink the tea, take the basket out and the water will drain out, leaving your cup ready-to-drink.

You can then keep the leaves in the basket and brew the tea again, making multiple infusions of your tea.

There are many other ways of brewing loose-leaf tea, however. Another great way is to brew the tea loose in a teapot, and then pour the tea through a strainer into a cup. Some teapots have built-in strainers for this purpose. There are also tea balls, fine metal balls that enclose tea leaves and sit inside a mug or teapot; however, some whole-leaf teas do not work well in tea balls because they do not have enough room to expand.

When you brew loose black tea, you can use boiling water, but when brewing loose green tea, it's best to use water that has cooled from boiling.

Some high-quality teas, like the Taiwanese oolong tea in this picture, are made with intact, whole leaves, often with two leaves and a bud still attached to the stem.

When brewing these teas, the leaves stay together so that you don't even need a strainer or filter. The leaves can be easily fished out with a spoon if they get in the way of drinking the tea or if you desire to keep the tea from steeping for too long.

This brewing method, mug brewing, is popular in Asian countries. People usually don't spoon the leaves out--instead they refill the cup with hot water when it is about half empty, and continually sip the tea so it remains roughly the same strength as it continues steeping.

Loose-leaf tea is a more sustainable option, in terms of both economic and environmental impact, for a variety of reasons. When you buy tea bags, you are putting your resources towards a lot of unnecessary packaging. Much of the packaging is not recycled and is not biodegradable, but even if you buy an environmentally-conscious brand with fully biodegradable packaging, and you compost or recycle all of it, you're still paying for unnecessary packaging.

Buying loose tea also helps promote economic sustainability in the communities that grow the tea, because a greater portion of the price you pay reaches the original producer. This is especially true when you buy high-quality artisan teas, where a greater portion of the skill resides with the producers.

Buying loose-leaf not only helps you, but at the end of the day you can feel good about your choice because you are also helping to protect the environment and promote economic sustainability as well!