Gardeners are being told they should put teabags in their garden in November, but only if they rip them open first.
Composting is a hugely beneficial thing to do for your garden all year round, not just in the summer, turning your kitchen scraps like potato peel, carrot offcuts and banana peel into rich, nutritious compost that will boost your garden plants and lead to much bigger, stronger fruit and vegetables as well as much healthier flowers.
You can start a compost pile anywhere in your garden with a simple plastic bin, although more expensive and more sophisticated options are available including wooden composters, multi-opening ‘hot bins’ and various other elegant solutions.
On a budget, though, a simple plastic box or an old bin with a lid will do if you just add some airholes for the plant bacteria to use to break down.
But people adding teabags into their compost have been warned – you must tear open the bags first and pour the raw tea leaves in directly. This is because many of the top branded teabags sold today actually contain plastic.
Many supermarket brands use plastic in their teabags, which means they will never break down in your compost, leaving a plastic residue behind which will also contaminate your compost with leached plastic chemicals.
Even plant based teabags, such as those used by Yorkshire Tea, should be cut open, and the bag disposed of separately, not in the compost bin.
Yorkshire Tea says: “PLA tea bags are sometimes called “plastic free”, but we’ve never used that label and WRAP, the people behind the UK Plastics Pact, also advise against it because plant-based plastics are still plastics.
“You can snip open your used tea bags, compost the tea inside at home, and put the bag itself in your refuse bin. If you don’t want to do that, the alternative is to put your tea bag in your refuse bin.”
Consumer advice magazine Which? explains: “Tea bags have traditionally been sealed with a plastic called polyproplene, which enables their edges to be heat sealed and stop them falling apart in hot water. Small amounts were used, but it prevented them being composted and, due to the enormous amount of tea bags used in the UK, it generated a large amount of plastic waste.
“The advice from the UK Tea & Infusions Association is to rip open the bags before placing the used tea leaves on your compost heap and dispose of the teabag paper separately in your bin where it will go into landfill.”