blog: coopette.com: Tea break?

Tea break?

The Japanese Tea House at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons

I’ve been a tea drinker since before I could walk, I should think. I certainly can’t remember a time before I drank tea. I’m a big fan of the black stuff, and happy to drink the green stuff (and the white stuff), but not so content with herbal and fruit tisanes. I made a start a couple of years ago with lemon balm, but I tend to find them rather lacking in body.

Tea bags are one of the great conveniences of the modern age, which is why I was very disappointed when Nick Palmer left me a comment on my Barriers to Composting post, telling me that there’s an issue with composting tea bags. Apparently they’re no longer completely biodegradable, with a fine mesh of plastic included in the bag for technical reasons. Nick wrote his own blog post on the subject back in March, before I discovered his blog.

I fired off an email to CaféDirect (my current supplier!) in the hope that they would be one of the good guys, with compostable bags. They aren’t. According to their email response, their “tea bags are made of paper and a fine polyester plastic netting, which stops the paper from breaking when a tea bag is infused. The plastic netting is also what allows the heat sealing on the edges of the tea bag, since the fibres melt and stick together to close the tea bag. The paper can be degraded, but not the plastic.”

So, what to do? Well, I have sent an email to Master Composter HQ at Garden Organic, asking them if this is an issue they fancy investigating – their current advice being that tea bags are fine to compost. Clearly they aren’t, unless you’re happy with an invisible plastic residue in your garden. They may have the resources to find out whether this is an industry-wide problem – are any tea bags safely compostable?

If you fancy helping out with the investigation then contact your tea bag supplier and ask them what their bags are made from. Let me know their responses via email, or in the comments, and we’ll compile a list.

I have a stockpile of tea bags to work my way through, and will continue to compost them for the moment as it won’t make much difference now I’ve been doing it for years, and I don’t fancy tearing the bags apart to compost the tea and bin the bag. What will I do when I run out of bags? That depends on whether we find out if there are compostable bags on the market. If there are then I will try that brand.

I may also try loose tea – I have scavenged in the kitchen and rediscovered the tea infusers and tea strainer I almost never use. And I may have another bash at growing herbs for tea in the garden. If you’ve got a favourite tea herb, then by all means champion it in the comments!

Posted 20 November 2009, 10:08. Posted in compost.

11 Comments for Tea break?

Oh nuts- I’ve been composting the teabags for awhile now. Glad to know that this isn’t okay. I think I had the idea that eventually I would do away with tea bags altogether because I plan on growing Camellia sinensis, but that is a ways off yet. I guess in the meantime I’ll look for some new infusers and loose tea. Thanks for your information!

Paula · Nov 20, 02:09 PM
I am in Canada and have also noticed the plastic mesh in my compost. Grrr. I have contacted a few companies about the tea bag/compost problem. Most did not get back to me however Celestial Seasonings did and they have a totally biodegradable bag. If they can do it why can’t everyone?

Sarah · Nov 20, 04:20 PM
I guess if enough people made enough fuss then it would change, but until then they’ll keep doing what is easiest and cheapest and saying it’s “what the customer wants”.

Do keep us updated when you try growing your tea bush, Paula!

Emma · Nov 20, 04:45 PM
The reason for the heat sealing plastic mesh is so that the speed of the packing machines can be much faster

Good to hear about Celestial seasonings bags.

Here’s a link to far more than anyone needs to know about tea bag paper!

http://www.allbusiness.com/manufacturing/food-manufacturing-food-coffee-tea/408038-1.html

Nick Palmer · Nov 21, 05:01 PM
Oh, BTW, I’ve emailed Yorkshire Tea about their policies as they are my tipple of choice. I was pleased to see, on their website, that they sell their tea in a loose leaf format too so I will try and seek that out for my infuser. I’ll email PG tips and Tetley too.

Nick Palmer · Nov 21, 05:15 PM
I emailed Equal Exchange (my favourite brand of fairtrade tea) through their website, and happily got this response:

Thank you for your email.

Please rest assured, our teabags do not, nor have ever, nor ever will contain any amount of plastic.

Please continue to happily compost away!

With kind regards, Jo

for more info on our company please visit the website: www.equalexchange.co.uk
equalexchange has been fair trading as an alternative trading company since 1979.
equalexchange is a workers cooperative and a member of IFAT (The World Fair Trade Organisation).

Carol · Nov 23, 03:30 PM
I used to use teabags and put them in my compost heap. They used to rot. Over the last few years they don’t. They are the only thing to remain intact after two years in the compost heap! Even the avocado pits and mango stones are growing.

I won’t be buying any more!

Why use tea bags anyway?

I was talking to Rex at Cooks’ Delight the other day. He has a fantastic green tea and has been out to see it actually growing. I wish I could remember the brand … I’ll get some next time. On a weight by weight basis it works out about 20p (I’m in the UK) more expensive for a pack, than for the equivalent weight in the popular tea bags. However, the black tea you get in popular tea bags is what used to be known as “fannings” that is the stuff that blew around the room and hit the fans. Basically it is what gets swept up after the good stuff has been dealt with!

So there you go. Not really more expensive to get the top of the range very best …

When it comes to herbal teas these days I just buy it loose and put it in a pan of water.

Have fun,
Living more,
Paul

P.S. Click here to join our mailing list
http://www.rawfoodrecipes.co.uk/Newsletter.htm

Paul Rees · Nov 23, 08:08 PM
i agree with Paul & noticed my T/bags were hanging around a bit in the compost, so I moved on to REAL tea. A pinch of whatever herb you feel will do you good & then the T/leaves into the compost. peppermint my fav at the moment – mmmmmmm

Angie · Nov 25, 09:23 AM
An update on Equal Exchange tea. Apparently Nick (the poster above) emailed them after I posted my email exchange with EE, asking how EE could say their teabags were sans plastic when “the major retailers claim that they need the plastic in the paper to heatseal them and make them tough enough to pass through the packaging machines.”

Jo replied to Nick (and to me) and said:

“Dear Nick and Carol,

Nick thank you for your email and very pertinent question.

I must apologise, it appears the information I have been given / given you, after further investigation, is not wholly true.

I have just spoken further with our tea partners and our teabags do contain plastic, in order to be heatsealed and packed as you mention below Nick.

However, they assure me and have confirmed that the plastic in our teabags is biodegradeable, so can still be composted.

Sorry for any confusion / misinformation – and thank you Nick for prompting me to look further.

Carol, I’m not sure if you can amend the blog on the site, but I am happy to contact them if you would like. And apologies again for my mix up.

Best wishes, Jo “

I’ve never found a tea bag in my finished compost, so perhaps this claim is correct.

I applaud Jo’s honesty, but my personal experience with so-called “biodegradable” plastic is not very good. A national organic box scheme that I used to use supplies lots of its produce in “biodegradable” bags. I put them in my compost bin and two years later they still hadn’t broken down. I tried putting them back through the bin repeatedly, tearing them into pieces, etc. They never broke down, and eventually I removed them from the compost bin and put them into the rubbish.

Carol · Nov 26, 04:19 PM
There’s biodegradable plastic and then again there’s biodegradable plastic… It depends which type they are using. Some just degrades into tiny pieces – plastic “dust” – which of course are effectively invisible – but mostly still there.

Some can completely degrade into biological substances plus CO2 and water – this is similar to the wet-strength additive resin in most facial tissues. Compostable plastic (like in some water bottles) needs to be in a municipal type composting system – they rarely break down in a home heap in any reasonable period of time.

Nick Palmer · Nov 29, 11:57 AM
I emailed three tea bag companies last night: Good Earth (who turn out to be part of Tetley), Clipper and Traidcraft. Had this response from Good Earth this morning:

“The material used to make the actual tea bag is a mixture of mainly cellulose fibres and a small amount of polypropylene fibres to give the heat seal. Under
normal composting conditions the cellulose fibres will break down, as will the tea, leaving the very small polypropylene fibres which are normally so small
they are not seen. It does however take a reasonable amount of time to do this and really needs to be placed into a proper compost heap.

If it has not broken down it may be because:

It has not been left long enough
It hasn’t spent enough time at the centre of the heap where the temperature is higher
It has been put on the garden, not on a compost heap
It hasn’t been mixed with enough vegetable or organic matter
The worm population is not high enough

Kind regards

Sue

Tetley GB Consumer Services”

At least they replied. I’ll update when I hear from the others. By now, hopefully one or two companies are beginning to realise people are interested in non plastic teabags!

Andrea K · Dec 8, 11:30 AM