Are Celestial Seasonings Tea Bags Compostable
- Date: September 3, 2021
- Time to read: 5 min.
With more and more households joining in the effort to cut back on landfill waste, it makes a lot of sense that so many people are turning to compost as an alternative to tossing their naturally degradable waste in the garbage bin.
Not only do you decrease your eco and carbon footprints when you choose to compost, but you also get to enjoy the end product of composting- humus.
If youre a tea drinker, like many of us, you might be curious whether or not your favorite bagged tea blend is compostable.
For some brands, the answer is yes.
The majority of tea bag brands are not compostable, however.
So if youre wondering whether or not Celestial Seasonings tea bags are compostable, the answer is yes!
Celestial Seasonings and a few of our other favorite tea brands currently offer compostable tea bags.
Many of these brands use not only compostable material for their tea bags but also offer little to zero landfill waste packaging as well.
Plastic Free Tea Bags: Which Brands Are Really Plastic Free
Plastic free tea bags? Yes, you heard that right
Your cup of tea might contain 11 billion microplastic particles and this is due to the way the tea bag is engineered.
According to a recent Canadian study at McGill University, steeping a plastic tea bag at a brewing temperature of 95°C releases around 11.6 billion microplastics tiny pieces of plastic between 100 nanometres and 5 millimetres in size into a single cup. Compared to salt, for example, which has been also found to contain plastic, each cup contains thousands of times greater mass of plastic, at 16 micrograms per cup. Please find more details about this study here.
Lets go one step back and understand how a tea bag is made and why it might contain plastic:
Are you shocked? Yes, we were too. We couldnt believe that incorporating plastic in tea bags wasnt tested for migration before engineering them, without even mentioning that fact that they are of course not biodegradable.
From now on, ask the brand of your prefered tea if they manufacture the tea bags using plastic or even better for you & the environment, switch completely to loose leaf tea.
Here a small guide to some of the most available and favourite brands in Australia. The answers were provided by the manufacturers or we found the information on their websites:
Are Tea Bags Biodegradable
Teabags, as with every other thing, are biodegradable. Plastic is biodegradable, leather will break down at some point, wax isnt excluded from the list of biodegradable things, but how long will all of these things take to break down completely? Years and Years.
Teabags, especially those that are heat-sealed, contain a certain amount of plastic. People who have added these types of plastic bags to their compost have reportedly found some remnants lying within the finished compost after a year. This shows that heat-sealed tea bags may take longer than expected, maybe as long as regular plastic to break down completely. But will they certainly break down? Yes, tea bags will break down.
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How To Brew Loose Leaf Tea Without Plastic
There are plenty of simple ways to avoid plastic tea bags. One way that probably doesnt require any new kitchen purchases on your part is to boil water on the stove top and pour it into a mug of loose leaf tea. If you dont want to drink tea leaves, strain it with a stainless steel strainer or a piece of cheese cloth you can wash and reuse.
A stainless steel tea infuser eliminates plastic contamination and the need for straining. Pour hot water into a tea mug and steep with loose leaf tea in the infuser for 3 to 5 minutes.
This electric kettle makes heating water extremely fast and easy.
This glass tea kettle comes with a stainless steel infuser. We add filtered water, turn on the gas stove, and add two teaspoons of loose leaf tea to the infuser as the water is heating. The process takes about 7 minutes from start to simmering in your favorite mug.
For Keurig users Instead of buying single-use pods to brew tea in your Keurig, get a stainless steel refillable pod to use again and again. Simply scoop about two teaspoons of loose leaf tea into the pod and use your Keurig as usual. One of the Green Child team members used the same stainless cup for 8 years and its still in perfect condition.
Plastic In Tea Bags: The Study
As Nathalie Tufenkji sat in a coffee shop about two and a half years ago, a thought crossed her mind as she lowered a bag of tea into hot water.
Tufenkji, a PhD-level researcher and professor of chemical engineering at McGill University in Canada couldnt help but wonder should we really be soaking plastic-mesh tea bags in boiling hot water?
I thought, Thats not a very good idea, putting plastic into boiling water, she told The Washington Post.
Tufenkji dispatched her student Laura Hernandez to purchase tea bags from a variety of companies and bring them back to the lab. Turns out, Tufenkjis hunch was right. The bags were not only releasing a few particles of plastic they were releasing billions and billions of them.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, found that steeping a plastic tea bag at a brewing temperature of 95ªC releases around 11.6 billion microplastics tiny pieces of plastic between 100 nanometers and 5 millimeters in size into a single cup. These levels were thousands of times higher than those reported previously in other foods.
To conduct their analysis, the researchers purchased four different commercial teas packaged in plastic teabags. The researchers cut open the bags, removed the tea leaves, and then heated the emptied bags in water to stimulate brewing tea. The tea bags were steeped for approximately 5 minutes.
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How To Compost Tea Bags
Although removing the tea bags before you compost the tea leaves eliminates most of the plastic components out of the resulting compost tea, theres still a lot to be said about the crucial role the tea bags play in the composting process. This is especially true of some of the tea bag brands we list below that use organic materials such as hemp to make the bags. Here we detail the steps youll follow for composting tea bags.
How Do I Know If My Tea Brand Makes Compostable Tea Bags
If the brand of tea you currently drink isnt listed above, you can reach out to them and inquire about the chemicals, materials, and processes used to manufacture the tea bags and the string. Most brands will reply within the space of 12 hours. If they use plastic bags, take it a step further by explaining why they need to make a switch and how it matters to you.
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Can I Put Tea Bags In Compost Pile
Theoretically, yes you can compost tea bags. The UK governments anti-waste advisory group WRAP suggests that tea bags are suitable for home composting and that if any parts of the tea bag are still visible in the end compost, they can simply be removed by hand or sieved out to be returned back into the compost bin.
Tea Bags Brands That Contain Plastic:
This information is based on our research and may have changed since publication.
Asda own brand
Co-op own brand 99
Tesco own brand
Tetley
Twinings ‘heat-sealed’ and ‘string and tag’ ranges
Yorkshire Tea
Lidl own brand
Sainsbury’s own brand
Waitrose own brand Essential Original Blend tea bags
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Is It Time To Turn Over Your New Leaf Of Tea
Why not try reusing muslin tea bags, 100 percent biodegradable silk or banana pulp tea bags, or maybe switching to loose leaf tea, which some say makes for a superior cup of tea regardless of its lack of convenience! Loose tea leaves may then be added directly from the cup or pot , obviating the need for plastic and bleaching while also degrading more quickly and effectively.
Composting Tea Bags In A Hotbin
As a gardener and consumer, should we compost our tea bags at home, discard them in municipal trash, or should we consider permanently altering our tea-drinking habits?
If you want to compost your regular tea bags yourself in the HOTBIN, so a few things you can do to assist the process along.
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Tea Helps Hydrate The Body
Well, tea is H20 mixed with rich flavor. Yes, I said that. Drinking tea will rehydrate your body after a long day at work and leave you feeling energized. Although tea was thought to promote dehydration by causing the body to lose fluid, research suggests otherwise. Drinking up to six cups of tea daily is just as hydrating as drinking the same amount of water.
Can You Put Tea Bags In Compost
QUESTION: Can you put tea bags in compost? We drink a lot of tea, and it seems like this would be a good source of organic material for the composter. Do the bags make it bad?
ANSWER: For a long time, tea bags have been considered compostable, but it has come to light that some companies use a sealing plastic called polypropylene, which is not compostable, in their bags. If the brand of tea you use does not use plastics in their packaging, feel free to compost them.
However, if your tea brand does use polypropylene or another plastic in its packaging, you should refrain from including them in compost. You should also be aware that the metal staples or metallic envelopes some brands use are not compostable and should be discarded in the trash.
Check the lists below for the brand of tea you drink to find out whether its packaging is compostable. If your brand of tea is not included, you may wish to contact the company to ask them about whether their packaging is safe to include in compost. In the meantime, to stay on the safe side, its probably best to stick with composting the tea leaves themselves and throwing out the bags and other packaging in the trash if information isnt available about the brand of tea you use.
If you make tea with a Keurig k-cup machine, you can open up the cup and dump the contents into your composter before you throw out the cup.
The tea brands listed below have bags that are free from plastic and are safe to add to your compost pile.
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Plastic Free Tea Bags In 2021 For A Greener Environment
According to the UK Tea & Infusions Association, 60.2 billion cups of tea are consumed yearly. Plastic in teabags might be the last thing to cross your mind when you sit down to enjoy a cup of tea. As many teabags look like they are made out of paper, we probably think that they would decompose when we put them in the compost bin once weve finished using it.
However, polypropylene, a plastic polymer is found in many tea bags. A large number of tea bags are therefore cannot be composted or recycled.
How Harmful Are Microplastics
A report published by the World Wildlife Fund from research done by the University of Newcastle, Australia, looked at data from 52 studies on microplastic ingestion. They figured that the average person consumes around 5 grams of plastic per week. Thats equivalent to a .
Other reports estimate that Americans consume 39,000 to 52,000 microplastic particles per year from seafood, water, sugars, salt and alcohol alone.
Now, were seeing that consuming a plain cup of tea could expose us to billions of microplastic particles.
While the research is still in its early days, some studies suggest that chemicals present in these microplastic particles might be harmful to human health.
Take bisphenol A , for example. BPA is a basic building block of many plastics but interferes with natural hormone activity in humans by disrupting our endocrine system. And while the FDA and EPA both claim the amounts we are exposed to are less than what we should be concerned about, some research suggests otherwise.
A review published in Reproductive Toxicology found that BPA exposure may raise the risk of birth defects, metabolic disease, and other health problems.
Studies in animals have found that even low doses of BPA might have negative effects.
Not only is BPA harmful, but other potentially dangerous chemicals are often added to plastics to modify their appearance or functionality.
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Pg Tips Email Response
Hello from PG tips, Thank you for your recent comments to us here at PG tips.
In response to your enquiry, I would like to give you the following explanation. We have recently changed the materials used in our tea bags. Our new plant-based material is fully biodegradable and is derived from corn starch. Once people finish their cup of PG tips they can put their tea bag in their food-waste bin at home, knowing that it will end up just how it started as a natural material in the environment.
For more information, visitwww.pgtips.co.uk
Can Yorkshire Tea Bags Be Composted
The new tea bags will be compostable, too – though because the new material only biodegrades fully in industrial composting, the best way to dispose of them will be to pop them in your garden waste or food waste bin rather than home compost. … 70% of plastic packaging effectively recycled or composted.
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Is Your Biodegradable Tea Bag Really Biodegradable I Think Not
Posted by Michelle Rabin | Apr 21, 2011 | Industry, Legacy | 38 |
Many years ago, I designed a new tea bag delivery system. It was aesthetically beautiful, yet simple. My goal was to provide a product that would enable whole-leaf tea drinkers to bring their tea from home to work or out for dinner at the time, it was almost impossible to get high-quality whole-leaf tea at any restaurants. I finally found a bag that worked perfectly, but it was manufactured in Japan. Despite repeated attempts, I was unable to get information about the material the tea bag was made of. Because I suspected it contained plastic, I ended up abandoning the project. Years later, I learned of a biodegradable tea bag that was being made for the industry to use with prepackaged tea. Truth was, at that point, I had founded T Ching and was otherwise engaged.
Moving from New Jersey to Oregon seven years ago, Ive embraced the lifestyle of the Pacific Northwest. Im one of a growing number of backyard composters and proud to be one. The problem Im currently having, however, is that Ive got dozens of corn-based tea bags sitting in my composter and theyre NOT degrading. How can that be, you ask? Grab a cup of tea and listen to this sorry tale of assumptions, misunderstandings, and misrepresentations.
Do Celestial Seasonings Tea Bags Contain Plastic
While older sources of information may report that Celestial Seasonings tea bags contain plastic, this is no longer the case.
Like many environmentally responsible brands, Celestial Seasonings has undergone many changes in recent years to improve the environmental friendliness of its products.
- Lyons Tea
- Teekampagne
It is important to note that these results only regard the tea bags themselves, and they exclude packaging, foils, tags, strings, or staples.
However, the compostability of even just the tea bags themselves is a huge accomplishment for these companies.
Finding alternative production methods, materials, and storage options is far from being a cheap or easy feat.
These companies are listening to the concerns of consumers like you and me and doing their best to meet our demands to find healthier and more eco-friendly alternatives.
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