Wish to know which teabags with out plastic exist all through the UK in 2024? Look no additional – I’ve rounded up one of the best eco-friendly and sustainable plastic-free tea baggage within the market right now. I’ve furthermore shared the teabags with plastic, that will support you avoid gorgeous plastic in your drinks.
As soon as extra in 2017, I wrote relating to the gorgeous hidden plastic in teabags. Teabags that many people have been composting in our gardens or by way of our kerbside meals waste pickup. That submit had such an impact as many individuals realized for the primary time that teabags embody plastic, alongside numerous utterly totally different gorgeous gadgets that embody plastic.
Since then, I’ve been defending tabs to see the place the tea enterprise is in the intervening time at in decreasing plastic from the nation’s favorite drink.
As such, I’ve appeared into over 20 teabag producers all through the UK, to see what teabags with out plastic can be found. I’ve furthermore appeared into how most attention-grabbing to eradicate the baggage whilst you’re achieved.
Why Do Teabags Comprise Plastic?
You is extra more likely to be questioning why there’s a want for plastic to be present in teabags. Efficiently, plastic (polypropylene to be exact) is added to the paper teabag to assist warmth seal all of them by manufacture.
Warmth sealing the baggage like attributable to this the teabags gained’t come open all through the topic, or your cup. It furthermore signifies that these tea baggage aren’t 100% biodegradable. That is normally a draw again in that these tea baggage you’re composting are leaving bits of microplastic all through the soil.
What Is Microplastic?
Microplastic is a big draw again, that’s nonetheless being understood by scientists correct now. Microplastics are tiny objects of plastic, lower than 5 mm extended.
What everybody is aware of is that microplastics are present in the soil, in the ocean, in our consuming water, inside fish and utterly totally different animals we eat, and even in people. When microplastics are all through the meals we eat and the water we drink, this means we’re ingesting plastic, and the long-term outcomes of this are in the intervening time unknown.
Microplastic comes from quite a few sources. It’d presumably derive from bigger plastic particles that has degraded into smaller and smaller objects. Nonetheless, it furthermore comes from teabags which have been heat-sealed with plastic, that we have now unwittingly composted.
How reasonably quite a bit damage can a teabag do, chances are high excessive you’ll be questioning? Efficiently, one teabag alone will do little or no damage. Nonetheless, if you think about that all through the UK alone we drink bigger than 60 billion cups of tea a 12 months, then it’s quite a few teabags and an entire lot additional microplastic.
The excellent news is that since 2017 tea producers have began to take away polypropylene from their teabags.
Teabag Terminology
Ahead of we dive in, let me get you on top of things on among the many many terminologies spherical teabags.
Kinds of Teabags
First off, you’ll see some dialogue spherical sorts of teabags. This can be a visible information to the sorts of teabags referred to on this information.
What About PLA Teabags?
On this information to teabags with out plastic, you’ll see quite a few dialogue spherical PLA. PLA stands for Polylactic Acid. PLA teabags are technically not plastic-free, as they’re created from plant-based plastics. It’s typically known as a bio-plastic. This merely means the plastic doesn’t come from a fossil fuel-based present.
There are some elements spherical PLA. Firstly, generally the plant provides used to supply PLA could be sourced from genetically modified (GM) crops.
Secondly, PLA tea baggage usually is not going to be home-compostable. It’s subsequently important to eradicate them appropriately. In case your native council collects your meals waste or yard waste bin for industrial composting, they will compost shortly. Nonetheless, in case your council doesn’t accumulate your meals waste, then these teabags carry out no in some other case than typical oil-based plastic tea baggage.
Should you don’t have entry to council meals waste collections, then to eradicate PLA teabags it’s best to tear open the bag to will help you compost the tea leaves in your yard. Then put the teabag in alongside alongside together with your frequent waste.
In case you wish to know additional, do examine my information on what’s PLA and is it biodegradable for an extra detailed deep dive.
I don’t suppose PLA is an ideal choice. Like many elements of sustainability, there are regularly compromises. Nonetheless, apart from switching to loose-leaf tea en masse, I don’t suppose there’s a good choice which can furthermore make tea an reasonably priced every day staple.
The Plastic-Free Teabags In 2024
Correct proper right here is the present state of affairs plastic-free tea bag state of affairs right now all through the UK (up to date October 2024), with notes on study to dispose of every model’s teabags, and if the model affords loose-leaf tea.
Aldi
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Aldi’s teabags are actually plastic-free. In June 2021, Aldi confirmed it was eradicating single-use plastic from its own-brand differ of teabags. We’re utterly glad to see that this has now rolled out all by the nation. Now all of Aldi’s personal model tea – together with decaffeinated, and fruit and pure infusions are created from PLA – so are industrially compostable.
Asda
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
In October 2022 Asda launched that each one of its personal model teabags – together with the Merely Necessities and Additional Specific ranges – will almost certainly be created from industrially compostable PLA. Asda says “Tea is a staple in most purchaser’s households so for us to make a change which might make such a distinction is an enormous second for us.”
Chook & Mix Tea
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Brighton-based Chook & Mix sells its hand-blended teas in PLA teabags. Or within the occasion you wish to avoid PLA you presumably can retailer for loose-leaf tea. Alongside its common black teas, the primary space the place Chook & Mix excels is in its distinctive tea blends. Assume Rhubarb & Custard, or Chocolate Digestive flavoured tea for one issue a bit absolutely utterly totally different.
Brew Tea
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Together with its tasty loose-leaf tea various, Brew Tea swapped over to PLA teabags in September 2017. Brew Tea then moved over to plastic-free packaging in 2018. Black tea is Brew Tea’s speciality, nonetheless it does carry a small differ of fruit and pure teas.
Clipper
Place in your meals waste bin | String and tag teabags house compostable
As soon as extra in 2017, folks have been most shocked by the fact that Clipper’s unbleached pure teabags contained plastic. As a consequence of purchaser demand, Clipper took motion, and switched its pillow teabags to a plant-based PLA numerous years before now, sourced from non-GM plant provides.
Co-Op Personal Model 99
Place in your meals waste bin
As a consequence of purchaser strain, The Co-Op switched its own-brand Fairtrade 99 tea over to PLA teabags in 2018.
Eteaket
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Edinburgh-based Eteaket primarily sells loose-leaf tea. That is packaged in house compostable Natureflex™ baggage and cardboard caddies. Its tea is just not most likely essentially the most worth environment friendly. Nonetheless, if you have already got a caddy, then their loose-leaf tea might also be available on the market in 100% plastic-free refill baggage, that are a bit cheaper.
Whereas its differ of teabags is small, all Eteakat tea baggage are created from PLA. These are packed into house compostable Natureflex™ baggage, and recyclable cardboard cartons for a smaller carbon footprint.
Good & Applicable
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Good & Applicable’s differ of award-winning teas – from its black teas to its differ of pure infusions – might be discovered PLA teabags. In case you wish to avoid PLA, you may also retailer for a variety of tasty loose-leaf teas.
Hampstead Tea
Residence compostable or can go in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Hampstead Tea has a protracted historic earlier of sustainability. It was the primary tea producer to introduce stitched teabags pretty than heat-sealed teabags. As such, its teabags have regularly been home-compostable.
Moderately than resting on its laurels, Hampstead Tea has taken large steps on the subject of the setting. Consequently, the overwhelming majority of its merchandise are plastic-free (apart from its Earl Gray and Inexperienced Tea with Jasmine tea bag envelopes).
Lidl
Place in your meals waste bin
Lidl lastly launched in August 2023 that it could be switching from plastic tea baggage to compostable ones. Lidl acknowledged that its new compostable tea baggage would land in retailer over the approaching months whereas current inventory steadily sells by way of. I’d consider by March 2024 that it’s going to have provided its non-compostable inventory – however do examine the sector sooner than you purchase.
Marks & Spencer
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Marks & Spencer quietly switched its teabags over to PLA in 2023, with little or no fanfare. I actually really feel it’s on account of M&S issued a press launch as soon as extra in 2018, saying that it was taking a “razor-sharp check out how we use plastics” and that “we’re taking plastics out of all 450 million teabags we promote“.
Although it took six years, I’m genuinely utterly glad to see that M&S’s teas are actually compostable.
Morrisons
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
One totally different straggler, I’m utterly glad to lastly report that Morrisons own-brand tea is now plastic-free. Morrisons says they provided 331 million plastic tea baggage a 12 months, so that is normally a very good step ahead.
Neal’s Yard
Residence compostable or can go in your meals waste bin
Neal’s Yard 100% pure and eco-friendly tea baggage are FairWild™ licensed. Which may be a world common that helps the sustainable use of wild-harvested elements. It furthermore ensures an ideal deal all alongside the provision chain.
Neal’s Yard PLA-free teabags are created from pure abaca (a plant from the banana household) and are oxygen-bleached. This method is chlorine-free and type to the setting. As such these plastic-free teabags can go straight into your personal residence composter.
Nemi
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Nemi is a specialist London-based tea company that offers quite a few tea blends, each as unfastened tea and teabags. Together with promoting great-tasting tea, Nemi offers employment to refugees to present them native work expertise and job readiness expertise to enter the UK workforce and to assist them combine into broader society.
All of Nemi’s teabags are created from PLA. Furthermore, its packaging is compostable, and its teas are pure, fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance licensed. The packaging is fairly funky too.
PG Options
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
PG Options made the swap to PLA plenty of years before now attributable to shopper strain. Now its full differ could be industrially composted by way of your meals waste bin.
Pukka
Residence compostable or can go in your meals waste bin
Pukka makes pure and pretty sourced pure teas. Its string and tag teabags have regularly been plastic and PLA-free. Nonetheless, every express explicit individual bag used to return wrapped in an unrecyclable plastic-lined envelope. The excellent news is that Pukka has taken its environmental obligations severely, and now makes use of broadly recyclable envelopes.
Roqberry
Place in your meals waste bin
Roqberry’s flavourful fruit and pure infusions might be discovered PLA plastic-based pyramids. From banana-flavoured tea to blueberry, these distinctive tea blends tread flippantly on the planet.
Sainsbury’s
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
I added Sainsbury’s to this plastic-free teabag pointers in August 2021. After information that from summer time season 2021 Sainsbury’s own-brand teabags will almost certainly be plastic-free, as a part of its ongoing dedication to halve plastic packaging by 2025, this lastly rolled out in-store in August 2021.
The mannequin new tea baggage are created from PLA and are industrially compostable. What I furthermore like is that the packaging is totally plastic-free too. The sector isn’t wrapped in plastic, and neither is there a plastic foil bag contained throughout the topic. Accessible plastic-free tea for the win!
Suki Tea
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Primarily based in Belfast, Suki Tea ethically sources and blends loose-leaf teas, pure infusions and fruit blends from all over on the earth. Suki Tea is most attention-grabbing acknowledged for its tasty loose-leaf tea, nonetheless, it does have numerous PLA-based pyramid teabags.
T2
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Australian model T2 reached the UK in 2014 and has fairly just a few Excessive St retailers dotted all through the UK. I’d say T2 is probably most attention-grabbing acknowledged for its loose-leaf tea various. Nonetheless, its differ of pyramid teabags is created from PLA for an extra sustainable cup of tea.
Teapigs
Place in your meals waste bin
Sustainable tea stalwarts Teapigs have regularly made teabags with out fossil fuel-based plastic – its tasty tea pyramids have regularly been PLA-based. Nonetheless, Teapigs didn’t cease there. Just a few years before now the model furthermore switched the plastic inside bag to a house compostable bag. Extreme plastic-free marks!
Merely lately a reader educated me that Teapigs is owned by Tata. That is normally a big industrial conglomerate that owns many producers – together with Starbucks – which is disappointing to take heed to.
Tesco
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Tesco lastly reworked to plastic-free teabags in 2023. This implies all of Tesco’s own-brand black teas, pure teas and speciality teas will almost certainly be compostable. Plus, in a daring dedication, the entire billion tea baggage provided by Tesco – own-brand and branded – are compostable by way of council meals waste collections.
Tick Tock Tea
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Tick Tock’s differ of naturally decaffeinated rooibos teas is obtainable in each PLA teabags and in loose-leaf codecs. Packaging-wise, the inside pouch of its Chilly Brew Rooibos tea differ could be composted by way of industrial composting amenities, and the pouches of all utterly totally different Tick Tock teas are recyclable at large supermarkets.
Twinings
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
I’m delighted to report that Twinings have made the swap to plastic-free teabags. A spokesperson from Twinings acknowledged “We’re utterly glad to say that the entire teabags we produce use plant-based biodegradable offers, from our black teas to our giant assortment of wellbeing blends. The fabric we use for our teabags will break down utterly if positioned into an area authority compost caddy or meals waste bin.”
Twist Teas
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Twist Tea’s differ of fruit, pure and black teas can be current in loose-leaf and PLA pyramid teabag codecs.
Yorkshire Tea
Place in your meals waste bin | Unfastened leaf tea various available on the market
Yorkshire Tea – together with frequent Yorkshire Tea, Yorkshire Gold, Yorkshire Tea Decaf and Yorkshire Tea for Onerous Water – have, since September 2021, been manufactured from PLA.
Yorkshire Tea furthermore says “All our merchandise are actually carbon impartial, and what we would like subsequent is for all our packaging to be “spherical” – which suggests created from renewable, plant-based or recycled offers, and reusable, recyclable or compostable after use“.
Which Teabags Do Comprise Plastic?
As of October 2024, just a few teabags from big-name producers nonetheless embody plastic. These embody the next producers.
Tetley
Tetley is in the intervening time all through the strategy of switching from plastic heat-sealed teabags. The model says “With 9 million (teabags) to transform, we’re going to’t change all of our bags straight, however we’re beginning with our large sellers of pretty Tetley Real 120s and 240s“.
Tetley has been saying this for a extraordinarily very very very long time, and I haven’t been capable of finding a single substitute on this. As shortly as I’ve affirmation that each one of Tetley’s teabags are plastic-free I’ll swap them out of this class.
Waitrose
It’s a little bit bit little little bit of a blended bag at Waitrose. Thus far it seems its personal model of caffeinated tea baggage is created from PLA, so could be disposed of in your meals waste bin. And it’s Duchy Pure differ is now house compostable. Nonetheless, its personal model of decaf tea will not be plastic-free.
I requested Waitrose for an substitute on twenty second March 2024 – I didn’t get a response, so I’ve reached out as quickly as additional to them in October 2024. I’ll substitute correct proper right here if I get a response.
To Conclude The Plastic-Free Teabag Dialog
Many teabag producers have made the swap to additional planet-friendly teabags. Nonetheless, it’s clear that among the many many big avid players, like Tetley and Waitrose must have a bit technique to go prior to the entire large teabag producers are plastic-free.
In case your tea producer of different isn’t talked about correct proper right here, then do e mail or tweet them to ask about their teabags.
Phew, that was a protracted one! Time to place the kettle on for a plastic-free cuppa I actually really feel! Should you’ve favored this, then do furthermore take a look at my information to one of the best oat milk. I’ve appeared into all styles of ethics behind the favored oat milk producers all through the UK and uncovered all styles of murky factors.
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