Did the teabag really need a makeover?

Packaging designers, you will have to weigh in on this one. Was the somewhat dramatic redesign of the everyday teabag by a brand called Tea Forté (complete with twee little leaf) really necessary? Come on... [via Treehugger]

I will say, though, that if this was done in as a conservation effort, I support it. While recently in London, I saw a student project at the Royal College of Art that commented on the planet's current paper consumption in a very visually arresting way. Everyday objects (cereal boxes, Post-it notes, etc.) were displayed with one quarter of the product separated from the rest, and all were accompanied by the statistic that we need to consume 75% less paper in order not to exhaust the earth's resources. On the wall was a teabag, with both the teabag itself and it's tiny tab divided into 25/75. At any rate, on the production end, making one of Tea Forté's tall isosceles triangular bags likely takes up just as much paper as one smaller standard rectangular teabag, so... I doubt it was a real conservational exercise (no, that would be trimming a standard size rectangle into a triangle that holds the same amount of tea). Sigh.