What’s the difference between green tea and organic green tea?

Green tea is one of the important legacies of Chinese. It has a thousand yearlong of history with different types, factions and brewing method. Countries like China and Japan have their own tea culture on green tea. 

Green tea starts to prevail globally when there was analysis report that green tea is recognized as an abundant source of EGCG (epigallocatechin-3-gallate), a catching polyphenol, and other antioxidants. Then drinking green tea became a healthy and beauty trend. When the trend fades gradually, people start to focus the origin of the green tea.

There is also following report says that the tea is known to accumulate fluoride, heavy metals like lead and other toxins from soil and water.

It is said that certain amount of pesticides and fertilizers are removed during tea processing, but many of these ingredients are water soluble, which means that they are left on the leaf structure and they are removed from the tea leaves while brewing. Not all the green tea born the same. Therefore, certified organic or “organic” the word start to be printed on tea packages. But do you really know the difference between green tea and organic green tea?

The Difference between Green Tea and Organic Green Tea

The word “organic” is not a label that is free to use. It needs to be certified by special department. It is illegal to use the label without permission. Though there is not a uniform standard to follow, some countries are strictly following the rule now. Organic food comes from organic farm with certain standard. Generally speaking, organic farm dedicated to grow food by fully using recycled sources, to sustain a healthy eco-system, and to protect species diversity. During the process, it requires no harmful synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides used, and it should sustain the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It has higher standards than the so called “green food” or “nuisanceless products”.

Therefore, the difference between the green tea and organic green tea is whether the tea origins from an organic farm or not. But from the above-mentioned, we can know that not all certified organic green is organic, and not all green tea without organic certification is bad. Some small farms don’t have the condition to certify their farms, but they do follow the organic rules. When we purchase, we may skip them by filtering the “organic certified” labels.

Many tea farms use synthetic pesticides and fertilizers to maintain a high yield to gain more profits. While organic tea farms mostly relies on the natural breakdown of organic matter, using techniques like green manure and composting, to replace nutrients taken from the soil by previous crops. Driven by microorganisms, this biological process allows the natural production of nutrients in the soil throughout the growing session, and has been claimed to as feeding the soil to feed the plant.

In the long term development, we should buy organic certified green tea to support such a behavior to protect our environment, to protect the natural ecosystem. And we should promote this biological growing process to the world. Even if we cannot tell the tastes between the organic green tea and regular green tea, it is still necessary to know that the word “organic” means more than taste and price.