Tesco Value Refuse Sacks

We, like most people lately, are trying hard to keep our monthly bills as low as we can so we decided to try out these black rubbish sacks from the Tesco Value range. The sacks come on a roll and have the normal white label going round them with the Tesco Value logo on the front in red a blue, so they are easy enough to spot on the shelf in the store. It was a bit harder to find them on the Tesco site when doing a search as I put in rubbish bags (which is what I have always called them) and couldn't find them, but found them after searching for black sacks, they are called Refuse sacks, not rubbish.

You get 30 sacks on a roll and the price is only £1 so that works out at 3p a sack. This is quite good money wise as long as they are going to be strong enough to use so that was the next test.

We recycle a lot of our rubbish, we can put glass, plastics in one place and paper and card in another so it cuts down what rubbish we actually have left over to go in the black bag. We have a swing bin out side the back door which we lost the lid to ( it got broken) and we have a black sack in this all the time for rubbish when we are out in the garden. We do have some bits of garden rubbish which we put in it, not a lot, its just a bit of pruning once a month during the summer months. We find that this kind of rubbish is fine in these Value bags as long as we cut up the stems quite small, other wise they poke out of the sides of the bag and make a hole and then we lose all the rubbish out when you pick the bag up.

The black bags fit in one of these swing types of bins easy, it is the tall kind and the bag reaches the bottom and comes over the edges with enough to stop the ends going inside the bin when the rubbish starts to fill up. There is plenty of the sack left over to tie it up after the bin is filled up as well. I find the easiest way to get the sack out is to tie up the top first. You don't get those loopy handle things with these bags, you just have to grab two sides and tie them together but there is plenty to do this with as long as you don't over fill the bag. I find that sometimes if I try to get the bag out of the bin before tying it up the sides rip and then I get holes and I have to find another black bag to place this one inside.

Indoors, we have another swing bin for more household kind of waste. We usually put a white bin liner in this and then when it is full we transfer the white bag into a black bag, placing the whole thing inside so both are tied up. This helps to stop the smells from kitchen rubbish and it makes it a bit stronger to manage.

One downside from these bags is that where the bags are on the roll, they are connected to each other by a row of perforated dots which you tear along to remove a bag. In the centre of the row of dots there is a gap so you can start it off from there, but if you are in a hurry and just try to tear a new bag off from the edge then 9 times out of 10 it gets to the middle and then it rips up the bag instead of going across the rest of the perforations meaning you can't use this bag as its the bottom of it and it would have a large hole in it. I have done this quite a few times when I forget what I am doing. If you buy the more expensive rubbish sacks which are thicker you can usually just tear them off easily like this with no trouble but as these bags are quite thin then its a problem you have to be careful of.

The bags do have other uses though as well as for rubbish, they are good for storing things like clothes and fabrics in if you want to put them in the loft as once they are tied up they keep clean and don't get damp. We also use one draped over our electric grill which we use for a bbq when it is standing in the shed so that it keeps it a bit cleaner.

All in all, I would recommend these bags if you are careful with your rubbish and mostly wrap stuff up before placing it in them, but they are very thin so if you want to use them for more bulky items then you should buy the thicker bags.