Good tea. Less waste.

We care a lot about what goes into our tea. We also care about what it comes in.

Tea packaging has an important job to do. Light, air and moisture aren't particularly kind to good leaf tea, so simply getting rid of packaging isn't the answer.

Our challenge has been to protect the tea properly while using better materials, less plastic and less waste.

We've made good progress. We haven't solved everything yet.

Here's exactly where we are. Our loose leaf tea cartons

Our retail cartons are made from FSC-certified card and are fully recyclable.

Inside, the tea is protected by a NatureFlex bag. It might look like plastic, but it’s actually a plant-based film made using wood pulp and can be home composted.

So our standard loose leaf cartons contain no conventional plastic.

When you've finished:
Recycle the carton. Home compost the inner NatureFlex bag.

Our pyramid tea bags

Our pyramid tea bags are made from Soilon, a plant-based material derived from corn starch.

They're unbleached, and rather than using glue to attach the string, we use ultrasound. Even the paper tag is unlaminated.

The tea bags are compostable, but we want to be clear about one thing: they aren't classified as home compostable because they take longer than 30 days to decompose.

It’s a small distinction, but an important one.

Our tea tins

Our 20g and 100g metal tins are designed to stay in your kitchen, not head straight for the recycling.

Refill them with your favourite loose leaf tea and use them again and again.

One carton. Lots of teas. Much less waste.

Sometimes sustainability is less about a new material and more about designing something differently in the first place.

When we redesigned our retail packaging, we created one carton that could be used across lots of different teas by changing the outer sleeve.

That meant only six full carton designs had to be printed rather than more than 52 individual versions.

Our packaging manufacturer estimated that the design saved 75 square metres of aluminium during production, as well as reducing offcuts and the risk of unwanted packaging stock.

The design went on to win Silver in the Sustainable Design category at the Pentawards.

We're rather proud of that one.

Made and packed closer to home

Our retail packaging is manufactured in Scotland and our teas are hand-packed here too.

Keeping more of that process closer to home was a deliberate decision, helping us reduce unnecessary transport while giving us greater oversight of the finished product.

And yes, there are a lot of cups of tea involved along the way.

What we haven't solved yet

We'd rather be clear about this than pretend we're completely plastic-free.

Our standard loose leaf and tea bag cartons use plastic-free alternatives, but some of our larger 250g loose leaf bags and 45 tea bag packs still use a high-grade recyclable plastic.

We haven't yet found an alternative that gives the tea the protection it needs and that we're satisfied is genuinely a better solution.

We're still looking.

In the meantime, please reuse those bags where you can and recycle them responsibly where local facilities accept them.

Loose leaf: less packaging, brilliant tea

One of the simplest ways to reduce the packaging around your everyday cup is to drink loose leaf tea.

It also happens to make a cracking cup of tea.

If loose leaf feels like too much faff, it doesn't need to be. Our plastic-free self-fill tea bags let you use whatever loose leaf tea you fancy without needing any specialist kit.

[Explore loose leaf tea]

[Shop plastic-free self-fill tea bags]

Better, not perfect

Sustainability isn't a box we think we've ticked.

Packaging materials change. Recycling infrastructure changes. Better options become available.

So we'll keep questioning what we use, removing unnecessary materials where we can, and being open about the places where we haven't found the answer yet.

Because we'd much rather make practical improvements than make grand claims.

And we'll keep creating really good tea while we're at it.