Plastic is something which is getting a lot of focus worldwide, and here at Taylors. We’ve put a lot of work into evaluating where we use plastic and why. Where we don’t need to use plastic, we’re looking at the alternatives, being mindful of the impact different materials can have on the carbon footprint. And where we see plastic as the only option, we want to move away from oil-based to plant-based or recycled plastics. 

Making these changes takes time though, and sometimes we’re waiting for the perfect packaging material to become available to that we can ensure our products reach you safely at the quality you’d expect.

All of our products contain some level of plastic. Because one third of this sits with tea bags, we’ve addressed this area first and foremost. However, that doesn’t mean to say we’re not working on other areas of our portfolio as well. Our Research and Development team are working hard to make changes to five items of packaging that we believe need addressing as a priority. 

1. Tea bags

2. Tea box overwrap 

3. Coffee bag envelopes

4. Coffee film (Ground and Beans)

5. Loose leaf tea film

This will take time. We’re working towards the ambition of achieving the Plastics Pact targets by 2025, but with any luck we’ll have this done sooner and we’ll be keeping you updated along the way.

PLA tea bags are sometimes called ​“plastic free”, but we’ve never used that label and WRAP, the people behind the UK Plastics Pact, also advise against it because plant-based plastics are still plastics.

Why change from one plastic to another? Well unlike traditional plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, plant-based plastics are made from renewable biological sources (like corn starch). 

It’s also better when it’s thrown away, as long as it goes in the right bin. PLA tea bags are industrially compostable, which means they can go in food waste or garden waste bins for the council to compost. 

As it’s so important to dispose of them like this to get the biggest environmental benefit, we want to be completely accurate when we talk about them. So we’re following WRAP’s advice and avoiding the phrase ​“plastic free”.

We knew that a tricky product to tackle would be our coffee capsules, and we’ve spent time looking at alternative materials to our plastic pods. 

There are a few alternatives that are currently being used by other companies — things like compostable, aluminium and refillable capsules. After much deliberation we decided that aluminium was the best option for our product in terms of keeping quality and freshness, but we still had questions over the recycling of this material.

If aluminium is recycled, it is the best material to use from a carbon footprint perspective; but if it ends up in landfill or incinerated, it has the worst carbon footprint. Recycle rates on capsules made from aluminium are very low at around 25%, and we weren’t confident this was a good enough alternative if it wasn’t being disposed of correctly.

After reviewing all of our options and due to multiple factors, we’ve decided to completely withdraw from capsules. We loved this product, but we know it’s not the right way to move forward, so from January 2020 we will no longer be producing capsules.