While celebrity Stacey Solomon has sparked debate this week over how often we should change the bed sheets there is something else as a nation it seems we're not quite getting quite right.

Supermarket giant Tesco says millions of us are making a regular mistake in the kitchen when it comes to pouring a simple cup of tea.

No - it's not whether the milk goes in first or last - but instead exactly how we're disposing of the tea bag itself once our cuppa is made.

The retail giant says people are divided on what to do with the used tea bag that is resulting in millions and millions of the bags being disposed of incorrectly every year.

For decades, says Tesco, tea bag manufacturers have used a plastic called polypropylene to heat seal the bags in order to prevent the contents spilling out in the box or once hot water has been poured over them.

As a result it means not all kitchen caddys or recycling schemes have been able to accept tea bags made using this method, which means unless the leaves are emptied first the bags themselves aren't always ideal candidates for home compost heaps either.

A new survey by YouGov, commissioned by Tesco, revealed that nearly half of the people it polled throw their tea bags in with general waste, some add them to recycling bins while a quarter of tea drinkers put them into food bins and 12% into home compost - but yet a third of those surveyed didn't know they might contain plastic or had checked the bag's contents.

The poll was taken ahead of a move by the supermarket giant later this year to make all its tea bags plant-based and so more easily recyclable, such as through kerb-side collections.

Tesco will join the likes of PG Tips, Yorkshire Tea and Twinings who have also made changes to their tea bags in recent years to try and eliminate plastic from the manufacturing process.

PG Tips says its switch to biodegradable tea bags has saved 330 tonnes of traditional plastic per year - the equivalent weight of 66 million plastic bags. While Waitrose this week also launched its own-brand home compostable tea bags - it says - to prevent 4.5 million tea bags from going to landfill or incineration.

Once changed the new Tesco boxes will also carry clear warnings to encourage more people to throw out their used tea bags correctly.

Adam Herriott from recycling organisation WRAP welcomed the move. He said: "It’s great to hear of further moves by Tesco, a founding member of The UK Plastics Pact, to make positive changes to their products and make it easier for consumers to tackle plastic waste.

“Now more citizens can enjoy their morning cup of tea safe in the knowledge that once the bag is in their food waste caddy it will breakdown with the other organic material."

By the end of this year the government hopes to clamp down on the use of more single-use plastic with plans in England to ban plastic cutlery and plates along with polystyrene cups.

The change will mean that from this October, the public will not be able to buy the banned items from retailers, takeaways and food vendors.

Under new legislation, it is expected the ban will be enforced through civil sanctions – but with the possibility of repeated breaches ending up in a criminal offence.

However, the ban will not apply to plates, trays, and bowls used as packaging in what the Department called 'shelf-ready pre-packaged food items'.