Trash Bag Review

Introduction to Trash Bags

Considering that just about every household in the U.S. uses them, there are remarkably few comparative reviews that try to identify the best trash bags. Indeed, we could only locate two sources that merit top ranking in our All Reviews chart: Real Simple, which compared about a half-dozen supermarket brands, and Consumer Reports, which pitted Glad ForceFlex against Hefty Ultra Flex, and compared both of these to the much cheaper Wal-Mart house brand America's Choice trash bags. Both of these publications tested trash bags' endurance in about the way you'd expect, by stuffing them full of garbage, empty boxes and sharp-edged objects like wire hangers.

After these two sources, though, the quality -- if not the enthusiasm -- of reviews falls off sharply. In general, we're not very fond of articles posted on Associated Content, since we suspect some too-positive blurbs have been paid for (or even written) by the manufacturer concerned. However, since the three separate Associated Content reviews we found (by three different authors) compare two trash bags from two different manufacturers, and have mostly positive things to say about both, they appear objective. It's clear that these writers have lived with these garbage bags, and are making an honest attempt to assess their durability.

Besides these Associated Content reviews, we included a very limited comparison of two bags by KETV in Omaha, a convincing single-bag test by The Impulsive Buy website (in which the writer climbs into a Glad ForceFlex bag and jumps up and down), and an NBC local news segment in which an impromptu panel manhandles Glad ForceFlex trash bags. We also took particular note of consumer reviews on Yahoo! Answers and Epinions, especially in judging the worth of Glad ForceFlex and Hefty Ultra Flex trash bags.