How to Upcycle Herbs After Making Teas, Tinctures, and Infused Oils

If you’re like me, you want to use every drop left over from your herbal creations. Sustainability and reusability when it comes to herbs is so important to me. Show Mother Earth gratitude for her medicine by reusing and upcycling herbs instead of throwing them in a trash can. Here’s a list of ideas that I came up with for upcycling your herbs.

Teas: When it comes to reusing herbs for tea, you can reuse the same herbs a second or third time. When you are done using the herbs, compost them. And if you're a witch like me, dry the herbs & dress a candle with them.

Herbal oils: After making infused oils, you can blend the herbs up in a blender to use as an exfoliant, add to salts or sugar to make a body scrub, or add to Epsom salt and put it in a bath.

Tinctures: Make a spagyric: A spagyric is an herbal tincture made by herbal alchemists. After an herbal tincture is made, the herbs are burned in a process called calcining that leaves behind white ash. This white ash is made up of pure soluble minerals from the plant. Those minerals, or salts, are then added back to the tincture, resulting in what some practitioners believe to be a more complete herbal extract. Another alternative is to compost the herbs.

I hope this offers you ways to give new life to your used herbs.