Health & Fitness
Re-Using Your Tea
Have used tea leaves and tea bags and want to recycle them? Look no further.
Catherine Felegi is the founder and author of the blog Tea Love, a blog dedicated to all things tea-related. You can find this post and others on her page, http://cafelegi.wordpress.com/.
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Hello fellow tea sippers! While reading my daily Google Alerts on tea, I came across an article detailing how the organic tea company, Honest Tea, is launching an initiative called "The Great Recycle" on Monday, April 30th, in Time Square, New York, to get people to recycle more. People can recycle products and receive points towards Broadway plays, tee-shirts and, of course, tea. All products will be turned into gardening supplies that will then be donated to an urban garden for PS 102, an elementary school in Harlem. Good for them!
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This got me thinking, though. This initiative focuses on how to recycle bottles. How does one go about recycling tea and tea bags? That's why I decided to list a variety of different ways to recycle and repurpose this amazing drink! Some are silly, some are made up from the top of my head and others are taken from various sources. Comment and let me know other ways that you can use your spent tea bags and tea!
- The website Apartment Therapy recommends using unused tea bags as air fresheners. This is perfect for any stale tea that you might have lying around the house.
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- Make a pair of earrings. I will be trying to do this now by varnishing some tea bags, hanging them on thin chains and connecting them to an earring hook ^_^ If this does work, I will post pictures!
- Composting! Tea leaves are great for that. Make sure you check the pH balance of the tea in accordance with the plant, though. Some teas are more acidic and thus would not be good for certain plants.
- To treat bags under the eyes. This is a pretty popular one. According to eHow, chamomile might be the best tea to use for this method.
- Tie two tea bags together and make yourself a pair of organic nunchucks.
- Reader's Digest published an article on 22 ways to use tea for the home, beauty and gardening! Everything from cooling sunburns to reducing razor burn to even getting rid of gray hair.
- Reader's Digest is not alone - Fox News published an article about 49 ways to re-use tea! The uses are endless, including cleaning carpets and polishing furniture.
- I referred back in a previous blog about making bath tea. Why not give this delightful mixture a shot?
- On Facebook, I posted an article that I found on how to make sugar cookies in the shape of tea bags. So cute! Maybe take some of those old tea bags and use them as a template to cut your cookies out?
- How does a green tea marinated steak sound? Get cookin'! (If you have a recipe to share, feel free to do so!)
- Sprinkle the leaves around for a brand new decor in your home that also smells amazing.
- Use it as a perfume. After all, tea smells great. Why can't you smell like tea?
- Some internet sources are saying that tea would be good for dying anything ranging from wood to fabrics. After all, tea does stain. Why not?
Do you have any good uses for tea?
