The Real Cost of Cheap Tea Bags

A standard tea bag costs about ₹5–10. That seems cheap. But what are you actually getting? Tea bags are made from the lowest grade of tea — dust and fannings, the broken remnants left after whole leaves are sorted out. This dust has more surface area, so it releases flavor fast — but it also releases bitterness fast, and it goes stale faster.

The bag itself is another problem. Most tea bags are made from paper or plastic. Paper bags are bleached with chlorine. Plastic bags release microplastics into your cup when steeped in hot water. Neither is something you want to drink every day.

Then there's the flavoring. Cheap tea bags need artificial flavors to compensate for the low-quality leaves. Those flavors are chemicals — not something you'd find in a real tea garden. They're designed to taste like tea, not to be tea.

The real cost isn't the ₹10 you pay at the store. It's what you don't get: no whole leaves, no natural flavor, no certification, no traceability, and potentially microplastics and chemicals in your cup. A ₹499 pouch of Nevisan whole-leaf tea gives you 50g of real tea — about 25–30 cups. That's roughly ₹16–20 per cup. For a cup of actual tea, that's not expensive. It's fair.