What are our tea bags made of?

Recently, a study of the micro-plastics released by plastic tea bags was done by McGill University (you can read the abstract here). The study looked at plastic tea bags sold by four leading tea companies. Specifically, how many microparticles and nanoparticles of plastic were released when brewing a cup of tea. The answer: a staggering amount.

Since the study’s release, we’ve had many folks ask, “What exactly are your tea bags made of?”

We worry about putting plastic into the environment and into our bodies. That’s why we made a special effort to make sure we don’t use ANY petroleum based plastic in our tea bags.

Our tea bags are made with poly lactic acid or PLA derived from corn starch. This is a biodegradable material that, in perfect circumstances, breaks down in a week or two. We don’t suppose those perfect circumstances really happen anywhere outside of a lab though. If the tea bags are just thrown on the ground (which makes me cringe to think about) it would take approximately 3 years to break down.

These tea bags aren’t technically compostable but we do put ours onto our worm compost pile. The bags stick around for the first few times that we screen out our worm castings— but each time, we put them back in for another go, and they eventually break down. They don’t add much in the way of nutrients to the soil, it’s more of a way to keep the bags out of landfills.