Charles’s warning over plastic peril in teabags
And he jokes his gut will have to be ‘re-engineered’ because so much is in our food
PRINCE Charles has revealed he steers clear of using teabags because they contain plastic.
He also said the increasing amount of plastic polluting the environment meant that someone might have to ‘re-engineer his gut’ to help break it all down.
The prince made the comments yesterday while visiting Polymateria, a west London company that has created biodegradable plastic which breaks down into water, carbon dioxide and microbes within two years – rather than hundreds of years for normal plastic.
The knowledge that a plastic called polypropylene is used to heat-seal teabags was not widely known until 2017, when Mike Armitage, a gardener from Wrexham, noticed they left white residue behind when put on a compost heap. Following his campaign, tea-makers PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea switched away from using plastic.
Charles, who unveiled a plaque to commemorate his visit to Polymateria, said: ‘I’m thrilled to have the chance to see what is happening in this remarkable place and I can only hope and pray you develop even more clever ways of removing this deadly waste.’
Talking to Dr Chris Wallis, head of the company’s innovations team, based in White City, Charles said that plastic in teabags was ‘very worrying… that’s why I try to avoid them’.
He added: ‘We’re all eating plastic... we’re going to have to re-engineer my gut to break it down.’
However, Charles might have to avoid teabags made by his Duchy Originals firm. Last night a spokesman for Waitrose, which stocks Duchy Organic teabags revealed they too were sealed with plastic.
Currently, out of 320million tons of plastic created every year, 30 per cent leaks into the natural environment. Charles described getting plastic out of the ocean as ‘one of the greatest challenges we face’.
The Daily Mail’s Turn The Tide On Plastic campaign has long been raising awareness of the need to keep plastic waste out of rivers, seas and the countryside.
Between March 22 and April 23, together with Keep Britain Tidy, the Daily Mail is encouraging our army of readers to sign up to the Great British Spring Clean and pick up litter in their local area. So far, 192,488 have signed up.
Niall Dunne, Polymateria’s chief executive, said it has been in talks with chains including Marks & Spencer, Asda and Waitrose about its Cycleplus biodegradeable packaging.
He added: ‘We’re designing packaging that if it does wind up in nature isn’t going to be around for hundreds of years choking sea birds and so on.’
Lidl is ditching its cheapest 9p ‘ reusable’ plastic bags from stores in Wales – as customers were using them only once. The supermarket will introduce cotton and jute reusable bags in the summer. The move is expected to save 150 tons of plastic and, if successful, could go nationwide.