Many of you will be very familiar with our tea bags – these little ‘tea temples’ have been specially designed to allow all those lovely whole tea leaves to fully expand and infuse properly. We think special tea deserves and special bag to brew in, and our temples do just the job. Below is a bit more information on our tea temples, however click here to read through our most up to date guide on what our products are made from and how best to recycle, reuse and dispose of them.
These tea temples are 100% natural and made from a bi-product of corn starch – its fancy name is ‘soilon’ and it was pioneered in Japan around 20 years ago. We’re really proud of the fact we use a natural material to house our tea, we avoid all nasty plastics wherever possible.
More recently we’ve had quite a few emails about our tea temples not composting and being scattered all over your rose gardens entirely intact – not a great look (even if we do love them!). We know that lots of you want to do the right thing and compost your used tea bags rather than binning them but your household garden compost isn’t quite ferocious enough to do the job.
Soilon is biodegradable and will break down within about 6-8 weeks in the best possible conditions (that’s in a big industrial composter) but at home it can take around 12 months or more. Not ideal for you compost lovers, we know, but if your local council give you a food waste bin, you can just pop the used tea temples in there with your normal fruit and veg waste and the council will take it all to your nearest food recycling facility. The tea temples along with the rest of the food waste will be shredded down and kept in containers for a few months where the heat and bacteria will break everything down to be used as soil fertiliser.
If your local council doesn’t provide doorstep food waste collections they should be able to point you in the right direction of how best to recycle your food waste. We’d suggest dropping them an email or giving them a bell and they can advise you :)
If you are still keen to give composting with our tea temples a go at home then we’ve heard lots of soil is the key! To get the best results, mix soil into your compost heap along with the normal fruit and veg waste. Soil has the microorganisms needed to break down the bags into water and CO2.
