PG tips brews up a polypropylene-free cuppa

PG tips tea bags produced with a fully biodegradable corn starch seal will replace polypropylene equivalents in the UK.

Unilever, which owns the brand, says plastics in the tea bags will be phased out completely by the end of the year, with the corn starch bags set to land in stores from next week.

Noel Clarke, Vice President Refreshment, Unilever, said the new-style bags are made using a new, innovative material that is 100 percent plant-based and at the “cutting edge” of science and technology.

PG tips pyramid bags are currently made mostly with paper, with a small amount of polypropylene used to seal the tea bag, a method used widely across the industry.

Unilever says its R&D scientists have been actively exploring plant based alternatives for PG tips “for some time” and have already converted some ranges in Canada, Poland and Indonesia.

The company says the conversion of its products for the UK market is its latest move to reduce the environmental impact of the way its products are manufactured and used.

Mike Falconer Hall, Organics Programme Manager at WRAP, said it was “great” to hear the announcement from PG tips. He recommended consumers recycle the bags with local food waste collections, if available, or compost them at home, although he said our climate means they “can take a long time to break down.”

Co-op leading the way for retail

Retailer, Co-op, announced at the end of January that it aims to be the first UK retailer to implement a new, biodegradable bag for its ‘99’ range of own-brand tea bags.

The Co-op, which sells around 4.6 million boxes of tea annually (around 367 million teabags) has joined forces with its tea supplier, Typhoo, and Ahlstrom-Munksjö, specialists in sustainable fibre solutions, to develop a new method of heat sealing bags, which will eliminate the use of a plastic seal.

It says the new bio-degradable bag, which was due to undergoing rigorous testing starting last month, could be on shelves later this year. Intended to be rolled out across the Co-op’s entire own-label standard tea range, the retailer says it will be “fully compostable” in food waste collections after use.

Jo Whitfield, CEO, Co-op Food, said many tea drinkers are “blissfully unaware” that the teabag from their daily cuppa is sealed using plastic. “Even though it’s a relatively small amount, when you consider the six billion cups of tea that are brewed up every year in the UK, we are looking at around 150 tonnes of polypropylene – that’s an enormous amount of accumulated plastic waste that is either contaminating food waste compost collections or simply going to landfill,” she commented.

The Co-op is dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of its products and has a long-term ambition for 100 percent of its product packaging to be recyclable with an interim target of 80 percent by 2020. This includes reducing the use of unnecessary and hard-to-recycle plastic packaging and using more recycled content wherever possible. It is also signed up to the British Plastics Federation’s PIRAP scheme.