Every day's a school day

We use Sainsbury's own which I believe are plastic-free so I split them and bung them in the caddy.

I drink coffee - I use a cafetiere every time. I don't like instant much and I hate tea!

We've always used Co-op loose leaf  tea, probably because both mine and MrB's  parents and grandparents also did. I've not found a nicer drink.
When I was a kid my Gran claimed tea bags were made from the sweeping ups and she wouldn't have them in the house.

We visited a tea plantation & factory in Sri Lanka. Watched the leaves being picked , then to the factory with their huge drying machines and to the packing area where the tea went into packets for retail.
The question was asked - what happens to the sweepings and he gave the same answer as your Gran!! May have been joking but teabag tea is very fine, compared to "real" tea.

I'm working my way through a last box of waitrose essential tea bags brought back on our last UK visit in 2020 (French loose leaf and herbal teas are brilliant, strong tea in bags deeply pathetic!) and they are not reappearing out of the compost heap, so I guess are plastic free.

Typhoo answered:

With regards to composting, the current filter paper used to make our tea bags are not entirely suitable for composting due to the polymer content.

However, we suggest that you open the bag and compost the contents and discard the bag in the food waste bin.

We are currently working on a fully compostable tea bag and we do not have a current timescale but, it should be on the shop shelves very soon.

We used to have a cellophane wrap around all our boxes of tea to seal in freshness however, in our efforts to reduce this waste packaging, we have now moved to a new box format (with a cardboard tear-strip that seals it) which does not require the cellophane wrapping. For this reason, you may see some stock in the market with cellophane wrap and some without. I can assure you this is no reflection on the product inside – it is all the same tea as before – just a new outer packaging.

Please feel free to follow our social media platforms for any future product updates.


No not compostable teabags but they're feeling very good about themselves in getting rid of cellophane wrapping, which incidentally I haven't seen for several years. 

........and there's me thinking the food waste bin was for "food waste" not empty teabags!

What does P think?

Yes I wondered about the food waste bin bit.
I haven't broached the subject directly with P but he knows of the conversation with typhoo. He's not jumping up preparing to change his brew though I've started decanting the leaves into the kitchen caddy and throwing the empty bag into the household waste. Not an environmental solution perhaps but keeps the casings out of the compost. I'm not confident I'll keep it up for long though.

I drink coffee - I use a cafetiere every time. I don't like instant much and I hate tea!

I got not drink coffee but I use the Nespresso pods, they are an aluminium pod with sealed coffee made under 15 Bar pressure every cup. I used recycle my waste pods back to Nespresso but a few years ago I found a product called the Nessie Press from Australia that lets you bust open the pods and collect the coffee grinds which I then spread around my blueberry bushes. I wash the aluminium caps and put them in my recycling bin which also takes aluminium drinks cans, no problem at all.

Another school day for me.
On our local freecycle site someone wanted a lawn levelling lute. A lute to me is a musical instrument, my brother actually made one himself and a thing of beauty it was too. I had to google exactly what a lawn levelling lute was. Am I alone in my ignorance? P knew sort of, which miffed me even more.

Another school day for me.
On our local freecycle site someone wanted a lawn levelling lute. A lute to me is a musical instrument, my brother actually made one himself and a thing of beauty it was too. I had to google exactly what a lawn levelling lute was. Am I alone in my ignorance? P knew sort of, which miffed me even more.

I used to use  a SISIS Tru-Lute on a regular basis whilst maintaining a cricket square/table. Used every day to renovate the worn ends after games the previous day and used extensively at the end of the season to rub in topdressing and level the wholle cricket table.

There is also a bigger version of a lute which attaches to the three point linkage on the rear of a tractor for levelling and topdressing football and rugby pitches etc.