Everyday Life Contest: Trash Bags

This post is part of the USA versus SWE everyday Life Contest.

It has been a while since the first post, and I have had plenty of opportunities to "discover" subjects for the everyday life contest. Today's post is about trash bags. Yep, you heard it right: trash bags. It is admittedly not the most exciting thing to write about, and probably not a hot topic for your cocktail party conversation. However, I don't think it is an overstatement to say that trash bags are more or less indispensable and actually play an important role in keeping your home clean and neat. Like it or not, you use them daily and once in a while you need to dispose of them.

Now I would not be writing all this if I had not found an interesting difference between Trash Bag Universe in Sweden and the US, would I? Of course not.

In Sweden you typically re-use the plastic bags from the grocery store as trash bags once they have fulfilled their primary purpose. This is simply not possible in the US for two reasons:

• The plastic bags from US grocery stores are completely inadequate for carrying trash. They are tiny, tear easily and are sometimes semi-transparent - who wants to see that three day old banana peel at the bottom of the bag when carrying it out?
• The trash bins are huge compared to the grocery bags. A standard trash bin appears to be 13 gallons, roughly 49 liters.

So, in the US, it seems common to actually buy trash bags to a greater extent. Now, this may seem wasteful (pun not intended), but let us stop for a while and imagine a better world where everyone brought their reusable grocery bags made from fabric when shopping. Yes - even then there would still be a need for trash bags! Ok, I agree, in a perfect world there would be no excess packaging, everyone would compost and there would be no trash, but let's stay realistic. So, accepting that we need trash bags, let us have a look at a Swedish and a US trash bag.


A typical Swedish plastic grocery bag reused as trash bag. Plain, effective and always available.


The US trash bag is more elaborate. It has a plastic strip that you pull out, effectively closing the bag while at the same time acting as a convenient handle. Neat!

So, what is the score of this round?

2 USA : SWE 1

Amazing, USA takes its second consecutive win, with Sweden now lagging behind in the totals! Is this still a game? Come back for the next post to find out! In the meanwhile, be a good world citizen and use reusable bags for your grocery shopping!