The United States, a country of coffee drinkers, is far less excited about tea. Where 44% of us drink two to three cups of coffee per day, only 25% of us consume two daily cups of tea, according to Solidaridad Asia, a civil society group pushing for sustainability in food supply chains. Still, some researchers have noticed a rising interest in tea's purported health benefits; in 2021, 98,000 metric tons of black tea and almost 17,000 metric tons of green tea, were imported into the U.S.
Unlike with coffee, though, we don't hear much about how tea production rates from labor and environmental standpoints. "The U.S represents [almost six] percent of total consumption, so it's not a huge market in terms of volume," says Steffany Bermúdez, a policy analyst at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) by way of partial explanation as to why American consumers may take less of an interest in the origins of tea. Additionally, because most tea is aggregated to be sold at auction, "There isn't actually a place where someone can go and check, where did this product come from?" says Chaumtoli Huq, a law professor at CUNY who studies the tea industry in Bangladesh.
