The team at Floreon are passionate about the environmental benefits our plant-based formulations offer over oil-based alternatives. Unfortunately, oil-based plastics are everywhere, even in the everyday tea bag.
Many tea brands use polypropylene (the most common oil-based plastic) to seal our traditional tea bags together, this is used so that they do not split open in boiling water.
Are tea bags compostable? No, the oil-based plastics in teabags derive from non-renewable resources, and therefore are not compostable or biodegradable. This leads to many people disposing of their tea bags into food waste bins and unknowingly contributing to plastic pollution, this causes confusion as tea itself is a natural substance and can be composted.
What are brands doing to combat pollution? Brands such as Yorkshire Tea and Clipper have completed research and are now turning to PLA (a plant-based alternative) to seal their bags. Encouragingly, Tetley’s goal is to produce tea bags made from PLA, this means that their tea bags will be fully compostable and can be placed into food waste collection bins.
Clearly, tea brands are wakening to their responsibility towards the environment and the need for compostable or biodegradable tea bags. We at Floreon find this extremely promising because we are confident our enhanced PLA has a place in the future of this change, delivering the performance expected of the everyday tea bag.