Kitchen Garden Forum

My family uses a lot of tea bags which end up in our compost bins. Unfortunately, when the bins are emptied and the contents scattered throughout the veggie garden, we are left with the unsightly view of the empty bags which have not rotted owing to them containing polyproylene.

My questions are, will they ever rot and will they, both in the short and long term, harm the soil?

Well they do disappear after about 12 months but, whether they do any long term harm to the soil, this I don’t know.
Good question!

They disappear OK for me but the real solution is loose leaf tea, save money and the problem.

I had the same problem, Mike, especially when the bags eventually dried out on the beds and flew all over the place. So. for the last few years, I have dried the bags on the boiler of radiator and every few days just open them all onto a paper kitchen towel and put all that in the compost bins.
All our teas are herb teas like fennel, camomile, peppermint etc, Geoff, and you can't buy these loose any more. Actually, at the moment I use our own fresh mint and peppermint which make a lovely tea.

The issue I have is non-degradable window envelopes, I shred all my junk mail and end up with sparkly bits everywhere.

Many thanks for the replies. I have also had a similar problem to Monika in that I keep finding the empty bags in places far away from the veggie patch. Perhaps I will have to change from using Tetley to those used by Monika or loose leaves as suggested by Geoff. I will keep investigating as I am sure having polypropylene being absorbed into the soil cannot be doing any good short or long term.

I will revisit this problem if/when I find anything interesting to share.

I split bags where I see them and remove the bag.

As a follow up question, as there is caffeine in tea, I remember James Wong saying that caffeine inhibits plant growth and germination. But how much caffeine is left in coffee grounds?
If this is true "Additional scientific studies have shown caffeine to be an effective slug and snail killer. It also kills mosquito larvae, hornworms, milkweed bugs, and butterfly larvae. The use of caffeine as an insect repellent or killer apparently interferes with food consumption and reproduction, and also results in distorted behavior by suppressing enzymes in the insects’ nervous systems." how can we combine its slug killing without inhibiting germination?

I never heard of that, Stephen. I have been putting our coffee grounds of two cups a day into the compost bins for years and have never seen any ill effects.

Back to the tea bags, do I not see a problem because our tea bags contain Yorkshire Tea? https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/brew-new ... d-tea-bags

Thank it for the reminder about fresh mint tea Monika. We have a forest of it growing at the moment and more jars of fresh mint sauce in the fridge than I can count.

What about the effect of newspaper ink in a compost heap? I,ve often hesitated about using too much of it but sometimes in the colder weather wrap up the contents of my kitchen compost crock in it first to try and retain a little heat before adding to the compost bin.

Interesting information from your link Geoff.

It states "What does “plant-based” mean?
We're replacing the oil-based plastic that seals our tea bags with a plant-based plastic called polylactic acid, or PLA."

So they are making plastic from plants now.

Check out this link for which can be composted https://www.compostguide.com/which-tea- ... composted/

I queried the ink on newspapers on this forum some years ago, Primrose, and I think it was dear old Johnboy who pointed out that newspaper print is not toxic nowadays and newspapers can safely be added to compost heaps.

That's good to know. I can only add that for most of the news posted in them these days the compost heap is probably the best place for it!