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Comment by jon_adler | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, all the actual tea bags are usually plastic. The wrapping is probably a small percentage of the plastic in this product.

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I'm pretty sure my tea bags are paper, and have always been paper. It's the more recent "pyramid" shaped tea bags that I think are made of plastic. The most recent change to my tea bags was to remove the staple so they could go in organic waste.

You'd be surprised how paper-like the plastic bags appear to be.

Could try burning a tiny piece and check how it behaves and smells.

I doubt the advice would be to throw them in the organic waste if it was plastic.

Some plastics can go in the organic waste bins, such as the organic waste bin bags.

While they can go in the organic waste bins, they still get sorted out at the end because they don't degrade fast enough.

Study from Australia: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X2... Article from California: https://www.siliconvalley.com/2024/11/21/when-compostables-a... German Trash Company: https://www.zakb.de/keine-fremdstoffe-im-bioabfall

Sure and it might be that the teabags are also being sorted out.

Teapigs pyramids are made of cornstarch

Why can't staples go in organic waste? They go into my compost pile and will rust. Iron is like 5% of average crustal rocks and is abundant in soils.

This is also an issue for microplastics ingestion. In the UK, teabags are increasingly made of PLA.

Time to switch to loose leaf tea

I solved this one with a metal tea infuser and bulk tea in a tin box

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