tea bags

can old tea bags (lapsang souchong) be used as compost/fertilizer?

Thanks

My immediate thought was add them to the compost heap-just thought I'd check and found this that is quite illuminating for such a simple thing as a tea-bag

http://www.recyclethis.co.uk/20110602/composting-teabags

brill thanks for that

I don't compost teabags at home, I put them in my council composting bin. This is because, despite having a very active lot of worms in my wormery the bags stay as little papery skeletons.

I use them to line hanging baskets and pots as they absorb moisture and rot down well by the autumn.

Good gracious, who wuld have thought there was such alot to think about when composting tea bags! Have always done it, but will split them now, and be careful about the sealings. 

I mostly use loose tea in tea-balls, which works out much much cheaper than tea bags and the tea leaves go straight in the compost bin.  We also grind our own coffee beans for the Bodum coffeee jug, which is much more economical than any of those dosette thingys, tastes batter, and gives is grains we can put on the garden to deter slugs (not that we have found that 100% effective, I have to say!).

I'm not that bothered about the odd teabag ending up as "little papery skeletons".  I recycle ALL my brown cardboard boxes as garden mulch (dig out weeds, apply 2 or 3 x layer of cardboard boxes, then apply 10cm minimum layer of stuff from garden shredder) and when I have to weed that section again there is frankly not a lot left of the cardboard, so a few teabags isn't likely to worry me much.