My hubby told me, the other day, that green guru Lucy Siegle reported an alarming find that 'tea bags (the stalwarts of compost bins and wormeries) are only 70-80% compostable thanks to the polypropylene webbing on today's bags. '
My first thought was Oh shit! That's probably going to mean that 70-80% of people stop composting their tea bags. Not a good thing.
I checked out her article and her links online and dug around a little further. I found various articles suggesting you should tear open the tea bags and just compost the tea, I found several mentions that people had stopped composting their tea and equally I read that various organisations such as WRAP that are supposed to know about these things say we should carry on composting our tea bags.
My plan is to firstly use up the tea bags I have AND I will certainly be composting them, and secondly to look into what tea bags don't use plastic in their bags.
Probably the words I read that most annoyed me were these:
"Teadirect’s Whitney Kakos said: “Most consumers don't notice (the polypropylene) and probably don't care.” (reported in Beverage daily.com)
I do understand that this plastic is there for a purpose as it is to do with the heat sealing of the teabags. I do understand that people don't want to have bits floating in their tea, but I do think that there are likely some perfectly viable biodegradable options.
Manufacturers do have to respond to market pressures and it is up to consumers to speak up and speak out about what they do and don't care about.
I want my teabags to be 100% biodegradable. Do you?
Take a look at this link for a new lease of life for an old (tea) bag:)
