The first time I saw a bag like that, I was shocked as well. Seems like just the worst idea to use plastic to create tea bags. Turns out it is and they weren't made out of plastic. It's a starch based fiber that is biodegradable. I don't think you could have plastic tea bags here in the EU in any case. I'd wager yours isn't plastic either. Yeah, so you probably got mildly infuriated over nothing, just like I did the first time I saw one of these 🤷
God I hate those. Paper tea bags you can toss into the fireplace or in the compost depending on the time of year, but those plastic ones you can't do anything but chuck them into the trash.
Some brands now use plant or cellulose derived material for their tea bags. Though they still use plastic for the outer wrappers, which is a bit annoying.
I was in a supermarket recently, and looked at the tea selection (I usually buy it at a more specialized place). There were almost no options without bags; quite disappointing.
That's what some hotels offer for their "Tea making facilities". We bring tea bags from home which are prefectly recyclable, even better since they don't use a metal clip anymore, but use stiching to connect the thread to the tea bag and the label.
Are you impressed by the shape? Does it make you feel upper middle class that your tea bags are this shape? Poor people don't drink tea made with bags of this shape! It's fancy! Now drink your microplastics!