I decided to have a green tea because it's healthier than soda. It's healthier, right?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10389239/

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[–] 43 points 2 years ago (20 children)

God I hate those. Paper tea bags you can toss into the fireplace or in the compost depending on the time of year, but those plastic ones you can't do anything but chuck them into the trash.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    Paper tea bags usually contain polypropylene or another plastic so they can be heat sealed shut. They aren’t fully compostable.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Certainly in the UK, there has been a real push for fully compostible teabags. Clipper Tea and PG are fully compostable. Yorkshire Tea was not, last time I looked - which is why I stopped drinking it.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Buy loose tea and tea bags.
    Test tea bags by burning them. No residue? They should be free of plastics.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Or: a reusable metal tea strainer. You just need to take 2 minutes every time to clean it but they’re no excess waste whatsoever

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I tried this but I always end up with tea leaves floating around my cup

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Then you either need a strainer with a finer mesh or smaller holes, or courser ground tea. I‘d recommend the former. My strainer has very small holes and at worst there’s a bit of tea power at the bottom of my cup

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Well shit. I guess I'm gonna have a lot of micro plastics in my compost then.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Yeah, except those are actually from polylactid and decompose completely without microplastic. Paper tea bags on the other hand are often mixed with polypropylene and ironically contain microplastic and don't decompose completely. The best way is a tea strainer anyway

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Are you sure those aren't nylon bags? Anyway I've found PLA's biodegradability highly over rated. When Sunchips were doing those PLA bags I threw one into a worm bin, when I emptied the bin a year later it looked pretty much unchanged.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Tbf: I'm from germany and can only speak for our local market.

    Yes PLAs decompose slow and waaay slower than advertising suggests and need certain conditions, but they are still the better choice over polypropylene.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    Tbf: I'm from germany and can only speak for our local market.

    Yes PLAs decompose slow and waaay slower than advertising suggests and need certain conditions, but they are still the better choice over polypropylene.

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