According to the United Nations, shipping delivers more than 80 percent of the world's trade and the IMO works to improve industry safety and reduce its pollution.
On land, rail and trucking services are also stretched thin, add a desperate shortage of shipping containers and the price for sending one across the waves from June of 2020 through March this year more than quadrupled.
Teabags first appeared commercially in the first decade of the 20th century and were successfully marketed by Thomas Sullivan, a tea merchant from New York, who shipped his teabags around the world.
They're not spread out evenly among factories, shipping, trucking, warehouses, and fears about the Omicron variant may add to the complexities of the problem.