There are soo many ways to reduce waste for plastic free July but this year I decided to target my tea collection. Many teas come with excess packaging such as staples, tags, individual packets and synthetic tea bags. With a tea or two a day, this adds up to quite a lot of waste (all of which is completely avoidable!). Bulk food stores are a great place to shop with minimal environmental footprint. I bought a heap of teas from the lovely Source Bulk Foods which has stores around the world. They had a variety of loose leaf teas (although not all that were online) to fill up jars with. Most of the teas were also organic or fair trade and a reasonable price.
The teas look gorgeous in the jars and taste much more natural than the teas found at Coles and Woolies. Having the teas loose leaf also allows you to blend your own flavours which is super fun. The only thing that needs to be bought apart from the teas and jars is a tea strainer - I got mine for $1.50 at Kmart. Otherwise, if you're a bit more thrifty you can make your own reusable cloth tea bags from scrap fabric.
I recently purchased a glass tea bottle and was gifted a gorgeous porcelain travel mug. There's also some great bamboo fibre options out there for those worried about breaking more fragile materials. The glass bottle is great as it comes with a removable strainer and can be also used for infusing water in summer.