Tea house
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.

Tea strainers

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!