Now PG Tips axes plastic from tea bags – to help compost bins

PG TIPS is to remove plastic from its tea bags after a gardener complained they were polluting the nation’s compost heaps.

The polypropylene seal used to hold them together means they do not rot down and leave a plastic fluff when they are left in garden waste.

PG Tips is replacing the material with a fully biodegradable one made from corn starch. If the new design is adopted by all brands across the high street, it could reduce the amount of plastic by 150 tons a year.

The Daily Mail has campaigned for ten years to highlight plastic waste and pollution. In January, Theresa May announced a new environment strategy, including efforts to eradicate all avoidable plastic waste by 2042.

Previously, the Co-op announced plans for plastic-free tea bags as the result of a partnership with its tea supplier Typhoo and Ahlstrom-Munksjö, a specialist in fibre packaging.

Unilever, which owns PG Tips, said its scientists had been exploring plant-based alternatives for some time and had already converted ranges in Canada, Poland and Indonesia. Spokesman Noel Clarke said: ‘Tea is the most consumed beverage after water in the UK with 10 billion PG Tips tea bags made every year.

‘The new 100 per cent plantbased material we’re moving to is an innovation based on cuttingedge science and technology.’

Last year, Wrexham gardener Michael Armitage started a petition addressed to Unilever chief executive Paul Polman, calling for the removal of plastic from tea bags. He started the petition – which has garnered 230,000 signatures – after noticing there was fluff in his compost heap and that it was coming from the tea bags.

Mr Armitage said: ‘ I never believed in a million years there could be plastics used in tea bags. I always assumed they were fully compostable and were just made of paper. I thought a lot of other people wouldn’t know this so I decided to launch the petition.’ He welcomed the news about PG Tips, saying: ‘Now that PG has decided to make the transition, it’s going to be a bit of a snowball effect. I think the rest of them will follow very shortly.’

Mr Armitage said while the new bags were a ‘great step in the right direction’, it won’t solve his problem of putting them in his compost bin because of the polylactic acid in the new product.

‘The gold standard for me is to produce tea bags that you can just chuck in your garden composter and they would just disappear along with the rest of the garden waste,’ he said. Unilever says the new tea bag ‘will eventually break down into its natural parts’, but is advising consumers to discard them in their food waste bins.

The PG Tips initiative came after Pret a Manger announced it was trialling a 10p plastic bottle deposit scheme which may go nationwide in the autumn.