Microplastic is a huge problem, that is still being understood by scientists today. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic, less than 5 mm long. I’ve put Twinings in the plastic category, rather than the plastic-free category because I consider them a work in progress. Nemi is a specialist London-based tea company that offers a variety of tea blends, both as loose tea and teabags. As well as selling great-tasting tea, Nemi provides employment to refugees to give them local work experience and job readiness skills to enter the UK workforce and to help them integrate into broader society.

In this guide to teabags without plastic, you’ll see a lot of discussion around PLA. PLA stands for Polylactic Acid. PLA teabags are technically not plastic-free, as they are made from plant-based plastics. It is often referred to as a bio-plastic. This simply means the plastic does not come from a fossil fuel-based source. Neal’s Yard 100% organic and eco-friendly tea bags are FairWild™ certified. This is an international standard that supports the sustainable use of wild-harvested ingredients. It also ensures a fair deal all along the supply chain. Rather than resting on its laurels, Hampstead Tea has taken big steps when it comes to the environment. Consequently, the vast majority of its products are plastic-free (aside from its Earl Grey and Green Tea with Jasmine tea bag envelopes). Neal’s Yard

Since then, I’ve been keeping tabs to see where the tea industry is currently at in reducing plastic from the nation’s favourite drink. Hampstead Tea has a long history of sustainability. It was the first tea manufacturer to introduce stitched teabags rather than heat-sealed teabags. As such, its teabags have always been home-compostable. Heat sealing the bags like this means that the teabags won’t come open in the box, or in your cup. It also means that these tea bags aren’t 100% biodegradable.This is a problem in that those tea bags you are composting are leaving bits of microplastic in the soil. What Is Microplastic? What we know is that microplastics are found in the soil, in the sea, in our drinking water, inside fish and other animals we eat, and even in humans. When microplastics are in the food we eat and the water we drink, this means we are ingesting plastic, and the long-term effects of this are currently unknown.

Unilever-owned PG Tips made the switch to PLA a couple of years ago thanks to consumer pressure. Now its entire range can be industrially composted via your food waste bin. Pukka Here is the current situation plastic-free tea bag situation right now in the UK (updated May 2023), with notes on how to dispose of each brand’s teabags, and if the brand offers loose-leaf tea. Aldi Unilever-owned Pukka makes organic and fairly sourced herbal teas. Its string and tag teabags have always been plastic and PLA-free. However, each individual bag used to come wrapped in an unrecyclable plastic-lined envelope. The good news is that Pukka has taken its environmental responsibilities seriously, and now uses widely recyclable envelopes. Roqberry Before we dive in, let me get you up to speed on some of the terminologies around teabags. Types of Teabags You might be wondering why there is a need for plastic to be found in teabags. Well, plastic (polypropylene to be exact) is added to the paper teabag to help heat seal them during manufacture.As of May 2023, many teabags from big-name brands still contain plastic. These include the following brands. Lidl This non-committal action on plastic in the rest of their range of teabags is in contrast to an M&S press release issued in 2018. Here, Marks & Spencer said they were taking a “ razor-sharp look at how we use plastics” and that “ we’re taking plastics out of all 450 million teabags we sell“. It’s disappointing that four years later that ‘ razor-sharp look‘ translates to a woolly ‘ we’re continuing to explore… in the future‘. The good news is that since 2017 tea manufacturers have started to remove polypropylene from their teabags. Teabag Terminology Similar to Morrisons, there is no information to suggest that Tesco’s own-brand teabags are plastic-free. I will press Tesco for an update. Tetley There are some issues around PLA. Firstly, sometimes the plant material used to produce PLA can be sourced from genetically modified (GM) crops.