Twinnings tea bags penetrable by mold
cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/53972145
I had a box of Twinnings tea bags sitting for ~6 months or so in a very humid room. The room was unoccupied and neglected over winter so windows were not opened (thus zero ventilation, so the room became a mold factory). Every Twinnings tea bag is individually wrapped in plastic-lined paper. It’s annoying because that stuff cannot be recycled.
I thought perhaps it’s fair enough to prioritize health, safety and tea freshness above recycling. But when mold covered most items in that humid room, every single tea bag got moldy on the inside. I’m a bit surprised it could propagate right through apparently well-sealed plastic. These tea bags have 4 wavey heat-sealing grooves around them, implying four points of failure. There was only a small amount of mold visible inside the box, and it just looked like sparse dust on the outside of the packets.
So what’s going on here? Is it shitty plastic that’s so thin it cannot do the job it’s intended to serve? If yes, then what’s the point? Is it just an illusion to fool consumers into thinking they are getting tea packaged for freshness? Is this an example of crappy design, or asshole design?
I would argue that the mould spores got in during manufacturing. Those bags don’t go through an autoclave before shipping, so there could be anything inside. All they need to grow is water and heat, both of which can penetrate plastic. All it takes is a single spore to make a colony.
It’s an example of wasteful packaging that faced tough conditions. The tea wasn’t designed to survive mistreatment like that.
There was mold outside the box and a little inside the box, as well as on the outside of the packets, and inside the packets. Mold was also on just about every object in the room. This all happened within a window of 6 months or so. I think it would be an unlikely coincidence if mold were also introduced in the packaging process and that it would hit at the same moment (after I consumed about half the tea before stashing it in the humid room, which was not moldy).
Well, that clarifies things a bit. If there's mould growing everywhere, it probably came from outside and went through all the layers. Clearly, the plastic wasn't hermetically sealed when mould was able to get everywhere like that. It may look sealed, but it obviously wasn't rated for anything beyond looking good.