Those "silky" (but really plastic) tea bags

Fascinating! I’m reasonably paranoid about plastic and never thought of this.

I’ve overheard a couple times here on steepser that those tea bags don’t compost, no wonder as they are plastic. Uggg!

Huh, didn’t know those bags were plastic. DX; I think when I have Awake, I’ll just cut the bag open and dump out the leaves into my infuser. Not too much hassle as that’s the only bagged tea I drink nowadays.

Those Lipton bags, I had thought they felt synthetic. Now I know for sure and not to throw them in the compost. Thanks for the article!

Yeah, they refer to those as ‘silk’ teabags, & initially I wondered if they were, but it seemed like they were plastic. I was working in my garden yesterday, digging into my compost pile to fortify beds, & came across one. It has to have been out there at least 2 years, & it’s still intact. I actually thought about photographing it, & posting it with a message, “This does not decompose”. Maybe I’ll do so & attach that link to it!

I have come across several in my garden that didn’t break down in the compost. I really thought when they said “silk” it was really silk and not plastic. I have no idea how many I need to pick out of my garden beds now. :/

Hmm. Now, I had figured this out to some extent on my own, in that I was well aware that the bags weren’t compostable, but it hadn’t quite occurred to me that they were plastic… yes, I know that doesn’t make sense. Oh well. I don’t have too many of them, and besides, I use Finum baskets almost all of the time (even though I do have a bunch of stainless steel ones, they just don’t have mesh that’s nearly as fine), and those have plastic components… so I’m probably screwed regardless.

Well this is mildly terrifying. I use those tea bags a lot! Oh well, I have a Kati coming in the mail and I’ll finally be able to brew loose leaf in the office. I like Chizakura’s idea to just cut them open, too.

Speaking of sachets in the garden, no idea where this company went off to after sending out samples to people on here…but they claimed their sachets were biodegradable. Yeah so guess what I found completely intact and not looking any worse for wear when getting ready to plant eight months later? Ha.

Interesting! I believe that most ‘standard’ teabags also contain a small % of plastic as well. Much smaller so should still compost but still…

Probably not too relevant to many on here but interesting all the same.