Hello!
Welcome back to my blog. Hopefully, everyone is still doing well as we come to the end of the semester! This week I will be taking a look at tea. Tea drinking was a big part of traditional Chinese culture, with its history dating back to around 2700 BC (according to Chinese folklore). Appreciation of tea is often paired with the Arts, and the offering of tea is highly symbolic as it can be an act of respect or making an apology. As such tea is essential in many traditional customs and ceremonies in China, such as in weddings. The drinking of tea has also spread to other parts of the world which has lead to rising demand. As a result, there has been an increase of 4.5% in global tea consumption every year from the period of 2007-2016. The production of tea has also spread to many other countries such as India, Kenya and Sri Lanka.
With the growing consumption of tea all around the world, I was interested to find out how sustainable tea was. According to this site, 30L of water is needed for a typical cup of tea. Of course, this is just the water used in the production of the tea and does not take into account the virtual water consumed through the importing and exporting of tea. Comparatively, coffee is a much more unsustainable drink, as it not only requires 5 times as much water to produce but also generates more wastewater that needs to be treated.
However, besides the water consumption for the production of tea, other environmental impacts need to be considered as well. The growing demand for tea has led to more land being cleared for tea plantations. This report shows that the land area for tea plantations has more than doubled from 114.1Kha. in 2001 to 287Kha. in 2015. This change in land use can often result in increased erosion and incidence of landslides, especially when the plantations are located at hillslope terraces.
Interestingly, the production of tea in China is becoming more sustainable. According to this article, the growing demand for tea is not just in terms of quantity, but also quality. Importers of tea are looking out for reduced pesticide use in tea plantations due to growing health and environmental concerns. This change in preferences has pushed China to pursue sustainable production of tea that takes into account the social, economic and environmental impacts.
It is heartening to see how the change in mindsets and growing awareness about the environmental crisis has helped to improve the sustainability of practices like tea production in China. It shows how not every increase in demand for goods has to be matched with a mindless increase in supply that does not consider the impacts on the social and environmental spheres. The preferences of the consumers can actually bring about a positive shift in the production process. Perhaps this is because the recent increase in demand is due to the increasing awareness on the health benefits of tea and not so much fuelled by traditions.
See you next week!
Jun Yu