Recycling Used Tea Leaves into Smouch

Twining suggested that in one small area of eight or nine miles, approximately 20 tons of smouch were manufactured every year.

But the adulteration of tea leaves was not taking place just in England. It was also a Chinese practice to mix other substances with the tea. European and American consumers expected their expensive green teas to have a blue tinge to their coloring and so, as the great plant hunter, Robert Fortune, explained in 1852 in A Journey to the Tea Countries of China, the Chinese method had for some time been to “crush Prussian Blue to a fine powder and add gypsum in a ration of three to four resulting in a light blue dye powder. Add the powder five minutes before the end of the last roasting”.

A London newspaper, the Family Herald, commenting on Fortune’s publication, said, “We Englishmen swallow tea, go to bed, turn and toss, keep awake, get up, complain of unstrung nerves and weak digestion, and visit the doctor, who shakes his head and says, ‘tea!’. This is what he says, but what he means is ‘Metallic paint’.”

Because the consuming public knew that it was easier to adulterate green tea, more and more people began to buy only black. This may have marked the beginning of the British preference for black tea and a gradual decline in the amount of green tea purchased.