When I lived in my house, I took about ten steps out the back door and tossed my full kitchen garbage bag into the big trash can that I then wheeled out to the curb once a week. Here at The Home I have to bag up my kitchen trash and walk down a carpeted hall to the elevator, down two floors, then along another very long carpeted hall to the receptacle outside. I don’t mind because if the mgmt had to hire staff to do this, our rent would go up. It’s no biggie.
But my kitchen garbage bag has to be very secure to make the trip. No drippage or tearage. I want sturdy and thick. I want one that won’t seal itself to the trash can such that I have to struggle to break the suction to pull it out (but I accept that this may not be possible to find). I like a drawstring top, but the two (or four) “ears” that you tie together are okay, too. If it’s scented, that’s okay, but not necessary. I’ve tried lots of brands but haven’t found the Holy Grail or even the Goldilocks. (Bearing in mind that once I find the product I like, they will immediately stop making it. But those are the breaks.)
I’d like to buy at the local grocery store (H-E-B) but amazon is okay. Costco isn’t nearby and I only go there about once a year. I’d rather not do Wal-Mart or Target.
I don’t have anywhere near the journey that you describe needing to make, but after a few drip/leak mishaps, I decided to take my trash out to the garage without removing the bag from the trash can’s inner bin (which can be readily removed from the outer, more decorative ‘shell’).
I’m wondering whether you might be better off with a simple wheeled luggage cart, dragging your trash receptacle (bag inside and intact) down to the outside receptacle, and then just unloading the bag from your bin into theirs.
This is a thought… But often I take my trash down and dump it in the dumpster on my way to somewhere else, so I don’t have to go back up to the apartment before I continue on my mission. And a leaky bag would still be leaky.
Aside: One thing I did have to get used to here was bringing my groceries (or anything else bulky) in from my car to the apartment. Of course, all apartment dwellers (even young’uns) have to deal with this. So I do have a couple of carts and dollys (dollies? Not to be confused with doilies, although, being an Old Lady, I have those, too.). There are several shared carts for bringing stuff in from your car, but then you have to take the cart back where it belongs after you have unloaded. And the carts have a way of disappearing, too. Living in a community can be a challenge.
I love my simplehuman trash can. They are pricey but I have had mine for eight years now and it works as well as it did on day #1. And they look good too.
They also sell trash bags that are meant to fit their trash cans well (each trashcan has a letter designation which matches the bags meant to fit it). Again, a bit more pricey but I have never had one fail catastrophically and only two (ever) had a minor leak (which was not bad at all and probably my doing).
I have a simplehuman can too. I’ve had it for at least 15 years and it’s holding up like a champ. It has an inner can, so I just carry the inner can plus bag to the trash. I do need to return the inner can to the house though. FWIW, I use Amazon Basic drawstring bags, which have never leaked, but the only time I actually carry the bag alone is when I’m lifting it out of the inner can and depositing it in the bin.
You can get trash bags by thickness (measured in mil). Around 0.9 or 1.1 mil is typical thickness, but you can find them at 1.2 or 1.5 mil too. Look for “13 gallon 1.2 mil” garbage bags, etc. Sometimes they’re also sold as contractor or heavy duty bags, but it’s better when you can find them at a defined thickness rather than ambiguous marketing language.
Day to day, I find it much easier to load and unload (the bags) than the simplehuman style with an inner liner. But if you don’t mind the liner, yeah, just carrying the whole thing to the tote will be safer than relying on a bag.
The Kohler also doesn’t have the best build quality (lots of plastic despite the steel exterior) and will probably break in a couple years, like everything else today.
Kirkland (Costco) 13 gallon scented bags with a tie top. I’ve been using these for at least 15 years without issue. They don’t leak or stick or cause any other problems that I’m aware of, even if heavily loaded.
They have a stiffness, that I can’t really describe. They are easily put in and don’t cling to the can. They have several varieties of tie options.
Some scented.
I have a SimpleHuman can. I bought it for the aesthetics & build quality.
IMO their special bags are a total trip-off, yet another example of the “Give away the razors then gouge the shit out of them on the blades” school of marketing. Which I despise. It was a real close decision for me to boycott even their cans for that reason.
The bags I use in my 8 gallon can are these. Stout, scented, no leaks unless you’re routinely dumping broken glass in there with your yucky stuff.
I believe Glad makes a similar product in 13 gallon size.
Something else I’ve realized is that a 13 gallon can for a single adult means it takes a couple weeks to fill up. My 8 gallon lasts me a full week and because it holds less, the weight of the full bag is less, and for any given strength of plastic, the odds of a tear are reduced a lot.
Aside:
Interestingly, that Amazon page has a large section at the bottom where Glad is advertising the fact their bags fit SimpleHuman trash cans. So evidently SimpleHuman’s evil sales model is indeed taking a bite out of Glad’s.
Glad Flex-Force is probably the best you’re going to find, it’s the brand I use too. But you still have to be careful. My bags tear and get holes all the time. Sharp objects (even things like the plastic or cardboard corner of food packaging) can cut holes and if you are too rough in terms of mashing stuff down into the bag to make room or being too aggressive taking it out, it will tear. My bags tear frequently. But I still don’t think any other products are better.
I used to have one but it didn’t last long unfortunately. I replaced it with this model from Amazon:
I like that it has a large capacity but it’s slim and fits in my closet. It is stainless steel outside but inside is a smaller plastic liner that you can slide out, that’s where the bag goes. Here’s a photo to demonstrate:
My old Simplehuman was similar but this model has worked better for me.
This trash can was not cheap, but it has paid for itself by being so little of a hassle for me. The kitchen trash can in my house gets the most usage and is the only thing really gross things go into (dog poop bags, old food) so it’s important that it work properly. The lid also keeps smells in very well.
Do you have separate compost collection in your area? Because they do where I live and between separating the recycling and the food waste (for the compost bin) the landfill waste is dry and takes a long time to fill the thirteen gallon bag.
Anecdotal: I have a 32 gallon trashcan in my barn. A few years ago I wanted to buy some “really good” trash bags for it, so I looked for extra-thick bags on Amazon. I ordered some generic-branded bags that had a thickness of 3 mil. Yea, they were thick. But they ripped very easily. Was really aggravating. I then bought some Glad ForceFlex™ bags at Walmart. The thickness is only 1 mil, but they don’t rip; they stretch when stressed. I love them. Of course, all else being equal, thicker is better, as you mentioned. But the lesson I learned was to stick with name-brand bags.
I agree but I am single and do not go through bags very fast. Their bags cost me more but it’s like $10-20/year (I did the math once…I forget exactly).
The bags fit well and are reliable. Both things I put a premium on.
I’ll skip a few Starbucks visits for that (if I liked Starbucks, which I do not).
Another vote for the Simplehuman bags (and trash cans). The bags very rarely rip or tear, and if they do it’s usually because I tried to cram something in. I also do not go through bags very fast so it does not end up costing much overall.
I look at it like this, its like paper towel. They all tear off the roll. They all dry hands or wipe up a spills and get wasted like nobody’s business.
Trash bags are a product that are doomed to fail on occasion. Its the nature of the thing.
We have lots of trash. Lots of persons here.
So we buy cheapest, decent brand we can. Double if necessary. Of course there’s no trash pick up here.
So we try to reduce what actually goes in a bag that we’ll need to haul to a dump.
It is generally unburnables. I don’t burn plastics or cans.
I hate over packaging of products for this reason.
This is my simplehuman can that I bought at the Container Store in 2012 when I moved into town from the country. It cost $99 (the price tag is still on it) and it makes me happy every time I look at it. They don’t show it on the simplehuman website any more. There was some discussion of this can on the SDMB a few years ago when I posted a picture of my kitchen and someone fell in love with my trash can. Can’t remember who. But they couldn’t find it anywhere.
I like the Glad Force Flex that a few of y’all have posted about. A trip to Costco to buy trash bags would wind up costing me a couple hundred bucks, 'cause that is the nature of a trip to Costco. We don’t have communal or city composting, but we do have garbage disposals in the apt., which I’ve NEVER had before. (Always lived in ~100 year old houses.) TBH, the cost of the bags is not too much of a consideration.
I recall a few years ago reading an article about modern amazing plastics. Such as the stuff used on those force-flex bags, but even more so.
The engineer was talking about the fact they can make plastics that are much stronger and much thinner and would work as well or better than current stuff. The super-plastic costs more per unit weight, but they could make bags that were gossamer thin, weighed nearly nothing so used little material, took up little space in the cabinet, etc. And were just as strong as current typical thick bags and could be sold at the same price point.
But the marketers found that their focus groups wouldn’t buy the ultra-thin bags, perceiving them as too risky to even try. So super-bags have languished as a product improvement the customers won’t buy, so they can’t buy.
Purely anecdotal: I tried the ForceFlex bags and found they were good at some things, namely anything bulky but not pokey (maybe like watermelons or styrofoam packaging). They deform well when there’s enough surface area.
But in my experience they weren’t as good at preventing leaks from sharp things like tree branches, cut clamshell packaging with sharp plastic edges, chopsticks, etc.
But this was by no means a rigorous science experiment, just my personal anecdote trying out one box of the ForceFlex.
I found the thicker bags to be better, personally, but that seems to be an uncommon experience for the Dopers here. And they still weren’t perfect, anyway.
Ultimately I just did the simplest hack: take out the trash more often, before the bags got too full
