Tea bags are some of the most common forms of commercially packaged tea. A tea bag is typically made of paper and sealed with a non-biodegradable bit of plastic. As insignificant as the plastic might seem, millions of tea bags are used every day, raising the continuous issue of whether tea bags should be disposed of in compost or food bins.
Teabags are often overlooked when making a list of single-use plastic items because they are believed to only include biodegradable components like paper and tea leaves.
However, top manufacturers like PG Tips, Tetley, Twinings, Typhoo, and Yorkshire Tea confirm that they use non-biodegradable polypropylene as sealants in their bags.
Despite this, manufacturers still advise that spent tea bags be discarded alongside other biodegradable food items as they cannot eliminate the plastic sealants.
Charlie Trousdell, Chair of the Organics Recycling Group, explains: “The tea bag making process applies the PP as fibers which melt, creating the seals which prevent the bag from falling apart.”
Trousdell also points out that these tiny plastic fibers are only a few microns thick, so they will not “lead to a PAS [a quality standard for compost and digestate] failure or even be that visible during the inspection, so it is hard to know their fate in the soil.”
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