Tea bags compostable?

[Billabong]

im in ireland. i dont know if tea bags are to different standards in different parts of the world or what. but im guessing theyre compostable......i seem to remember somewhere though hearing that some contain plastic. or have i imagined that. anyway i have quite a few used ones. what do u think?

 

[Esther Knapicius]

I guess, I would slice the bags open and just toss the leaves in the garden. not hard, few seconds of time, then no wonderment .

 

[Billabong]

I guess, I would slice the bags open and just toss the leaves in the garden. not hard, few seconds of time, then no wonderment .

lol. i must be borderline R word to have not thought of that. thanks a lot

 

[Anniekay]

Yes, the bag and all except the tag if it is plastic coated.

 

[yardiron]

I've been cutting open and dumping tea bags and coffee grounds in my gardens for years. I can't say how much it helps or doesn't help but I figure it can't hurt.
I was told that some plants in the vegetable garden though don't do well with tea bags likely due to the tanins and some minerals in tea but for use there I compost them first. I started keeping an old small trash bucket on the side porch where I just dump my tea and coffee grounds, every so often I'll dump the can on the compost pile and turn it into the soil a bit. In the fall, I dump a layer right on the garden and rake it in. In that mix I include egg shells, tea bags, (cut and dumped), and coffee grounds plus some vegetable scraps from time to time, mostly banana peels. I used to compost corn husks too but read that since most corn is sprayed with glyphosate in the fields it can cause issues when composted into your garden.
I don't know how true that is but I didn't like the sound of it so the only corn husks I compost are from what I grow myself.
I made the mistake once of using grass clippings as mulch in my vegetable garden, since my own yard didn't produce enough grass clippings I used some from a landscaper that mowed the property next door. They apparently use a ton of pesticides and weed control on their lawn and the clippings from there wiped out the whole row of squash and peppers in three days and it took years to recover that area from the damage. Now I only use last falls leaves as compost which seems to also keep the soil must moister and looser than having nothing at all.
Rose bushes seem to really love tea grounds, as does anything that likes a neutral PH level but I found that squash, cucumbers, and similar plants don't respond well to tea bags put directly into the garden for some reason.

Someone said that some plants cannot absorb the nitrogen directly and that too much nitrogen may actually prevent the plant from absorbing it and other nutrients properly but I can't claim to know the science behind that claim or if its true or not but I do now that if I put tea leaves directly on my tomatoes they seem to stop growing as fast almost like when they get too much calcium. After a few poor results there I now only compost tea leaves for the veggie garden but continue tu dump some directly on the ground around my shrubs.

 

[MiTmite9]

im in ireland. i dont know if tea bags are to different standards in different parts of the world or what. but im guessing theyre compostable......i seem to remember somewhere though hearing that some contain plastic. or have i imagined that. anyway i have quite a few used ones. what do u think?

You're remembering correctly: Some brands of teabags contain microplastics. I've been warning people about this for years.
The plastics are added to paper teabags to help the bags hold their "form:"
"Most paper tea bags also have plastic fibers used in the sealant in addition to these nylon and PET plastic tea bags. Even paper tea bags have an unsettling substance called epichlorohydrin added to them in order to keep them from bursting." (source: US National Institute of Health.)

Sometimes the small square paper labels are backed with plastic, but not always.
SOME teabags (as US NIH stated) are even made of nylon. Curse the idiot who came up with that "innovation."

I use teabags to plug up holes in my flowerpots (ceramic/black plastic). But now I do my research and ONLY purchase tea brands that don't use plastic. We toss teabags into our compost bin nearly every day.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I realised about the plastic when I used to find little withered looking bags, the tea and paper had rotted. I stopped putting them in the compost and then PG Tips stopped putting it in. It set a standard and then I think some other brands followed suite.

 

[yardiron]

I use only the gallon size Lipton tea bags, I got through about two a week in the summer. I never thought about just tossing the whole bag in the compost, I've always cut them open and dumped out the contents in to a can on the porch. I do save the bags through to use them to block the holes in larger flower pots and even in the bottom of seed trays in the spring when I grow my own tomato plants. It keeps the soil from washing through the drain holes.

I just did a quick test of one of the T bags and if lit, it'll flash burn instantly leaving behind nothing but a bit of carbon dust.
They're folded over and sealed on three sides and hold about 1 cup of ground tea leaves. I've been cutting them open and dumping them out for years so there's never been any bags in the compost.

 

[roadrunner]

Makes one wonder if there is plastic used in coffee filters