can you compost tea bags

[taff]

I quite like the fact that the bags don't rot down so quickly, means they soak up a bit more water for the soil when it's dry.

[Jeanied]

I think it depends on whether it bothers you to have the bags floating around once you have spread your compost. Sometimes they annoy me - so I just poke them back in the soil with a stick.

[mrbadexample]

A lot of the more commercial ones now have plastic in them (God only knows why, apparently it's progress)

I only found this out recently, so emailed Yorkshire Tea (all I buy) to find out if it was true. This was the response I received:

"Thank you for taking the time to contact us, Our teabag paper is layered up in several layers. One side of the paper incorporates a very thin web of a meltable plastic (polypropylene). This is necessary to seal the edges of the teabags.

We advise our customers that they can compost our tea bags. Legislation says that provided an item is 95% degradable, then it is classed as composable. The amount of polypropylene in teabag paper is much less than this, so from a legal point of view teabag paper is compostable. Basically polypropylene is innert and does not react with or damage plants or animals. There is some argument that says that polypropylene fibre can help soil bind together and aid water retention in soil, but the amounts of polyprop that you would compost via tea bags would really not register in a typical garden.

My colleagues who are keen gardeners report that, with a good, healthy compost heap, our tea bags compost in around a year or so. One suggestion that we often give is to use them in a pot on top of crocks and underneath the soil to aid drainage.

I hope this helps with your enquiry if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us."

Having said that, I've never found any trace of a bag in my compost heap.

HTH
MBE

[Comfreyfan]

I do sometimes find the empty bags when I'm digging the compost into the ground, they don't always rot down that quickly, but I also find avocado and mango stones that haven't rotted - I usually just dig them in anyway, or if I'm feeling particularly fussy I throw them back into the compost and leave it till next year!

[Two_Sheds]

I've never found any trace of a bag in my compost heap.

Me neither, and our staffroom gets through a tonne of teabags. I am finding, on my own plotty, lots of tights, that I'm darn sure I never put in the compost bins - but then I find crisp packets too, and I don't eat crisps