Teabag Wetland Project

AUSTRALIA

Scientists have launched a project that aims to bury thousands of teabags in wetlands around the world to try and discover how efficient the different wetlands are at capturing and storing carbon dioxide. They recognize that a standard technique for monitoring the carbon is needed for accurate comparison, but monitoring devices would cost too much.

By simply burying teabags and measuring the rate at which the tea decays, the scientists will be able to measure how much carbon is being released into the atmosphere. Fast decay of the tea will mean that more carbon is being released; slower decay will indicate that the soil is retaining the carbon.

Deakin University researcher Peter Macreadie, leader of the project, said “Some wetlands are much better at carbon storage than others. We need to find out the best wetland environments for carbon sequestration so we know where to invest energy.” Lipton teabags are being used because they are already favoured by international researchers studying carbon sequestration, and they are available around the world. Green tea and rooibos teabags have been chosen because they contain different compounds and green tea breaks down faster than rooibos.

“If we have these two teas out there in the same environment, we can examine how they degrade comparatively to each other and in comparison, to other environments,” explained project coordinator Stacey Trevathan-Tackett. The bags are numbered and labeled, a GPS point is noted, and40-80 teabags are buried at each site. They will be monitored over a three-year period and then dug up and measured at three-month, six-month, and one-year intervals. The executive director of the global carbon project described the project as “a great idea.

Wetlands are extremely threatened around the world, so anything we can do to highlight their benefits to society will certainly give us more ammunition to convince agencies and governments and non-government groups to put resources towards their conservation.”