If You're Composting Used Tea Bags, Make Sure To Follow This Rule

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If you're a tea drinker, you're probably shocked by how many bags you can go through in a day. While you can re-steep them, depending on the type of tea you're drinking, you may not get as strong a cup. There are a lot of creative ways to repurpose tea bags, but some of them require more effort than you'd like to take on. So into the trash they go, which can make you feel a bit guilty about contributing to food waste. 

However, there is a solution worth looking at: composting. Doing so allows food scraps to be recycled into organic material, which can be used for planting or gardening. Regardless of how you use your compost, it keeps food scraps out of landfills, which is a good thing. However, as any home composting guide will point out, not everything can be composted. If you're haphazardly tossing your tea bags into the compost bin, you could be setting yourself up for issues later down the line.

Plastic, metal, and inorganic compounds will not compost. So, if your tea bag has a metal staple affixing the bag to the string, or if the bag is made with plastic, it won't break down. These materials can disrupt the microbial activity in your pile and may harm your plants, which is bad news when gardening season is around the corner. Knowing what the tea bag is made of will help you decide whether it can be composted or not.

In general, it's recommended that, unless the package is clearly marked as being compostable, you only compost your tea leaves and throw the bag itself away. This is because the bag may contain trace amounts of plastic, and it can be difficult to tell whether it's safe to compost based on looks alone. However, some industrial composting processes (as opposed to backyard ones) can break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polylactic acid (PLA), so if you utilize a curbside compost service, you may want to inquire whether it can take these types of tea bags or not. 

When shopping, look for tea bags that are marked as being compostable or biodegradable, or forgo buying bagged tea entirely, opting for loose-leaf tea and a strainer like the House Again 2 Pack Tea Infuser instead — it'll give you a higher-quality tea experience, too. If your tea bag is safe to compost, the good news is that it's easy to do. Squeeze out as much of the water as possible and break it apart into smaller pieces before adding it to your pile. Tea bags are also considered a compost "green," so you may need to add compost "browns" like leaves to balance them out.