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My tea obsession is no secret and pretty well documented. One thing I discovered during Zero Waste Week is I throw a lot of used green tea leaves into the compost. I know some people reuse tea bags and the leaves to make more than one cup but I don’t see the point in that as all of the health benefits from the tea come out in the first boil. I wanted to look into other ways that you can reuse tea leaves.
This is what I found…
10 Ways to Reuse Leftover Green Tea
Soak you Feet
Let us kick it off with a weird one, apparently, you can bathe your feet in green tea leaves. It helps to eliminate foot odour.
Get Rid of Bad Smells in your Fridge
First, you need to sun dry the tea leaves, then place in a pot in the fridge to eliminate bad odours.
Clean Carpets
Simply scatter slightly damp green tea leaves onto your carpet, leave them for 10 minutes, then hoover them up. The leaves attract the dust which then gets sucked up with the leaves.
Reduce Humidity in your Home
To do this you first need to sun dry the leaves outside, the same as the fridge one. Then simply place the leaves in a damp area of your home. The leaves absorb excess moisture.
Deter Bugs
You can burn the tea leaves to deter flies and mosquitoes. They need to be sun dried first though. I’m not entirely sure what you would burn them in? Perhaps I shall look into that further.
Reduce Acne
Apparently used green tea leaves work a treat on acne. Rub them onto your face and wash them off. I wish I had known this when I was younger, I suffered terribly with acne.
Remove Toilet Stains
Throw some used tea leaves into the bottom of the toilet bowl and leave them in there for 10 minutes. Then simply flush away, the stains in the bowl should go with them.
Use as a Mouthwash
Boil up the remaining tea leaves, leave them to cool and rinse your mouth with the liquid to reduce bad breath.
Clean Mirrors
Green tea is great for cleaning mirrors. Brew a second pot of tea with a handful of used tea leaves. Leave it to cool and use it to clean your mirrors.
Fertilize Plants
Green tea is full of organic nutrients which are perfect for plants. Soak you leaves in water for several days and strain the liquid. Then pour the liquid at the base of your plants. Make sure there aren’t any actual tea leaves in the liquid as they would rot which would attract harmful bugs.
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What a brilliant post. Tea leaves is not something I would imagine you could reuse. To burn them I’d probably treat them like incense – so get a charcoal disk, scatter the leaves over the top and set fire to the disk (obvs you need to put that into a flame proof container like a votive candle holder or small enamel dish). I wonder if you could infuse them into a home made candle?