12 best plastic-free tea bags to make your brew better for the planet

Best: Overall

This brand is as transparent and sustainable as they come, and makes it all fun too. Brew Tea – based in Manchester, uses whole leaves (not dust, it insists) and is a member of the Ethical Tea Partnership which supports small estate growers. This is a refreshing brew, full of flavour and depth (no weak tea here) mixing bergamot oil with ceylon black tea, orange peel and calendula petals.

We use this brew as our everyday tea and love it. All the tea bags from the brand are made from cornstarch, the inner lining is made from NatureFlex and inside the box is a really useful card telling you what all the packing is made from and how it should be recycled: from the tea bags and inner lining which decompose in 45 days via your council food recycling bin, to the outer box which goes into the paper recycling. You can buy them in packs of 100 now too – for £17.99 if you subscribe, or £20 as a one off.

Best: For affordability

It might look most like an ordinary tea bag, but this is far, far from it. Each bag is unbleached (hence its more earthy colour), organic, Fairtrade, plastic-free and non GM. It was the world’s first pillow-shaped bag to meet this criteria and was launched in 2018. And if that’s not enough, it was even the world’s first Fairtrade tea.

The teabag is made from abaca plants – a type of banana – and the plastic that once sealed the bag has been replaced with a material made from non-GM plants. It’s become one of our go-to everyday teas, just like it says in the name, and is by far the most affordable on the list. Although Clipper has ticked many boxes with its teabag, it’s now working on making the inner foil packaging recyclable too.

Best: For gifting

We love this brand’s ethos of "cup to compost", where all the pyramids are made from GM-free sugar starch, which is home compostable, along with the inner plastic-look pouch that holds the tea bags. Hampstead Tea was the first company to produce a fully home compostable bag – which takes just 91 days.

The tea is whole leaf and all the ingredients are organic or biodynamic, where no chemicals are used. We love that there’s no string or labels on the bags and it comes with a little handy bamboo tong to grab your bag out – perfect when there’s no spoons in the office. The earl grey makes an excellent, well-rounded brew. There are also plenty other flavours in the range, too.

Best: Without string

This whole-leaf tea company started in 2007, and was the first brand to remove the paper tags from teabags. In 2012, We Are Tea joined the Ethical Tea Partnership and moved from nylon bags to ones made from soilon. Each tea bag is sealed by ultrasound instead of glue, which makes them biodegradable at an industrial level between three and six months, so make sure you put them in your council food waste bin. It can go in your home compost, but it will take much longer (at least 18 months). When the tea first launched, the plastic inner part of the packaging was not recyclable, but it’s now made from NatureFlex, too. It makes a lovely cuppa, and we also really rate plenty of other flavours in the range too.

Although the English Breakfast bags are out of stock for now, we’re hoping they’ll be returning soon. Check back for updates.

Best: From a cafe

Based in Edinburgh, this ethically sourced tea specialist cafe, which opened in 2008, sells its own brews in tea bags and loose leaf, and is also part of the Ethical Tea Partnership. The tea bags are made from soilon, which isn’t bleached and is biodegradable. The tag is made from paper which is not laminated and is attached to the string via ultrasound, while the inner packaging, made from NatureFlex, is recyclable and can be composted at home. We love this as a weekend morning brew. And definitely head along to the cafe when you’re in town.

Sadly, the earl grey bags are out of stock, but there are plenty of other Eteaket tea bags to browse.

Best: Social enterprise brand

The tea bags at Nemi have always been plastic-free, since launching in October 2017. The pyramid bags are made from soilon, are guaranteed GM free and are totally biodegradable at industrial level. There’s no glue used to attach the string and labels, instead it’s joined by ultrasound and all the packaging is made with NatureFlex. What we love most about this is that the brand also helps refugees integrate into the UK by employing them to run its tea stalls.

Best: For a weekend brew

This Australian brand, born in 1996 in Melbourne, reached the UK in 2014 when it launched in London’s Shoreditch. It has since opened 14 stores in the capital and takes sustainability seriously. It’s now gained B Corp accreditation, meaning it’s reached incredibly high standards when it comes to sustainability and ethics.

The bags are made from cornstarch, but have a more opaque appearance than any of the others we tested. The bags will breakdown in home composting but it can take a long as 18-24 months, so it’s best to put it into your local council food composting where it will be quicker. The inner plastic is not recyclable, but the brand is working on switching this to a plant based material. This is our favourite new tea for its floral flavour that we love devouring from a pot at the weekends.

Best: For innovative flavours

After launching in 2017, Roqberry prides itself on “blending the rules” by using classic flavours to create modern fusions such as “aromatic sushi and spice” and “black smoke”. These pyramid tea bags, made from soilon, encase the single-source tea that comes in black, green, herbal, rooibos and oolong, and all are biodegradable. As it won’t breakdown in under a year, this tea bag should be thrown out with your council food waste as soilon composes at industrial standards (in six to eight weeks). The cube boxes are made from FSC paper that’s easily recyclable, too.

Best: Wrapped in envelopes

Launched in 2001 in Bristol, Pukka Tea’s bags differ from all others as each bag is wrapped in an individual envelope to ensure freshness – and it’s more environmentally friendly than you might think. It took four years of research to develop this new packaging, and it has removed more than 100 tonnes of plastic from the brand’s supply chain. The envelope contains only a very thin layer of BPA and PVC-free plastic, but is still able to be recycled with paper. Since 2014 the brand stopped using a staple to connect the organic string and plastic-free label, and instead uses a little stitch to attach it.

Best: Pillow shaped tea bag

What began life as a mobile tea bar, has now found a permanent cafe in east London. The plastic-free range was added in 2017 and is made from the non-toxic material soilon (which needs to go in a collected food waste bin). These are the largest bags we tested and aside from Clipper’s pillow shaped bags, are the only one that comes in a flat large square shape, instead of the pyramid. Bags are packaged in a plant based plastic alternative called Vegware which is also compostable, but only at industrial levels.

Best: High street brand

The Twinings pyramid tea bags have always been plastic-free since it was launched in October 2014. They are made from maize starch which is treated by an enzyme that allows it to be spun into filaments. The tea bags include loose leaf tea which makes an excellent brew, but each bag has a label attached that’s covered in a thin layer of plastic – so it won’t dissolve if it ends up in your brew, apparently – and will need to be removed before composting. The inner foil wrapper isn’t recyclable, but Twinings is in the process of reviewing its range to find alternatives.

Best: Forward-thinking brand

Teapigs was the first brand to receive the world’s first plastic-free trust mark, created by the campaign group A Plastic Planet in May 2018. These biodegradable bags are made from cornstarch, while the paper tags use vegetable inks and are, you’ll be glad to read, non-toxic. Don’t be dismayed when you open your box, as even the clear “plastic” inner bag (made from NatureFlex) is compostable. The bags can go in your home food recycling bin for compost, which may feel strange, but they will compost.