Alice's Daily Cup of Tea

This post was inspired by https://recycling-better.blogspot.com/ and https://ijd267.wixsite.com/trashblog, both excellent blogs about recycling. (Also the origami blog, but I couldn't actually open it) I felt these OSTs were tangentially related to mine, so I might as well give them a shot. While drinking tea is pretty straightforward, recycling better takes some more thought because we generate trash basically all the time. I decided to focus on paper and plastic waste, since those were the most relevant ones to school and being at home. In particular, I realized that I never tried to recycle the paper packaging of each individual tea bag that I use, and that I tend to throw away a lot of plastic things without checking whether they can be recycled. I  realized that the paper on the tea bag is around the dimensions of a dollar bill. To make use of the bags, I folded some into nice origami shapes, like a six-pointed star. Now my whole tea-making process is more envir...

While my blogging journey may be over, I am definitely continuing to drink tea. So I encourage you to think about what you have in your glass, cup, mug, or whatever as you go about your every day life. Humans waste a lot, and not all of it is food. Part of my goal was to actually save water, but another facet of this small thing every day was the prompt myself into thinking more about what I use and whether it is necessary.  For example, I inherited my tea drinking from my mother, who drinks hot tea because that was the only way to ensure the water was clean. I am grateful that boiling water is now taste and not necessity. For all you tea drinkers out there, here are some other things you can do along the same lines. You could invest in a thermos to keep your tea hot (or cold) longer. This saves energy and water at the same time! You could invest in a bigger on smaller teapot based on your average tea consumption. And certainly, if you drink plastic bottled tea, try homemade instea...

Shown above are all the pictures of successfully downed gulps which I remembered to chronicle. Each one was accompanied by a deep sense of satisfaction that the tea did not go to waste and also that I was achieving a healthy state of hydration. There are many more which were, regretfully, forgotten in the heat of the moment (or in the drowsy state post morning practice?). I salute them, and the vital purpose they served in keeping me from dying of dehydration. Exaggeration aside, upon reading the first post in posterity, it occurred to me that there are a couple loopholes in my argument which I need to address. It is entirely possible that the water saved from not wasting tea water goes down the drain anyways from increased bathroom breaks. However, I assure you that this is not the case, because I drink about the same quantity of water, but instead of remaking fresh pots of tea I simply rewarm the cold tea already in my cup.  Secondly, the reason why conserving water fro...