That’s a whole lot of tea

By R.E. Spears III (Contact) | Suffolk News-Herald

Published Thursday, November 5, 2009

As a Southerner, iced tea has always been a big part of my life. When I was growing up, there was always a pitcher cooling in the fridge, and I recall that family gatherings and church homecoming dinners always featured jugs that were segregated by sugar content. As a youngster, I opted for the sweeter mix, but I’ve grown to appreciate unsweetened tea as an adult, even though I understand it’s an affront to my Southern heritage.

Today, tea is available premixed and bottled and can even be bought from soft drink machines. There are single-serving tubes of artificially sweetened tea powders intended to be mixed into bottles of water, there are specialty teas and teabag pyramids, teas without caffeine (Why?) and teas with extra caffeine, fruit-flavored teas and just about any other twist on tea that could be imagined.

According to the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, experts project that the tea industry will grow to be worth $10 billion by next year. Spurring the growth, the journal says, are studies that show significant health benefits to be had from drinking tea — whether iced or hot.

As a group of business leaders learned on Thursday, Suffolk has a big stake in this growth industry. With 120 tea machines and more than 400 employees, the Lipton Tea factory on W. Washington Street produces a million teabags per hour — more than 6 billion per year.

That’s a lot of family gatherings, church homecomings and all-nighters fueled by the beverage brought in 1880 to the masses in America by Sir Thomas Lipton.

Friday’s event was an opportunity for employees of Suffolk’s tea factory to tell the business community about their success in reducing the plant’s landfill contributions to zero. They have good reason to be proud of their accomplishment, and companies of all sizes around Suffolk could learn an important lesson from Lipton about the need to be good stewards of the environment.

But I must admit that I found my mind wandering during Friday’s presentation, imagining 6 billion teabags. In short, that’s a lot of tea. And according to Lipton Plant Manager Ted Narozny, the Suffolk site is only the second-largest factory owned by parent company Unilever in terms of teabag production, though I’m certain it’s not for a lack of effort on the part of Lipton’s Suffolk employees.

In fact, Narozny said, if you’re buying Lipton teabags somewhere in America, you’re probably getting a Suffolk product.

It makes me thirsty to think about it. I wonder what I should have?

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