The best trash bags for outdoor trash cans

This is the other product that comes back when you search for 20-gallon bags, and it is a completely different object from a tall kitchen drawstring bag. Thirty inches flat gives roughly a 19-inch diameter, which is the width of a round 20-gallon utility container, and 36 inches of height gives you the cuff to fold over a rim with no retaining ring. Plasticplace printing both the gauge and the flat size is the reason this takes the pick over the dozen unbranded cases beside it.

This is the bag to buy when the can holds cat litter, yard waste, broken-down packaging or anything with a corner on it. Twenty gallons of waste is heavy, and a heavy bag fails at the side seam on the lift rather than at the bottom, which is the failure that ends up on your floor. A stated 1.7 mil is roughly double the 0.9 mil Hefty prints on its 13-gallon bag, and the 120-count brings the cost per bag well below the supermarket brands.

High-density film is thin and stiff rather than thick and stretchy, which makes it very good at resisting punctures from packaging and poor at stretching around an awkward load. For a garage can, a recycling station or a workshop bin that mostly swallows cardboard, that trade is the right way round, and the per-bag cost is a fraction of a drawstring kitchen bag. The RL-3036XH part number is also the kind of thing that lets you reorder the identical bag in two years.

The useful thing here is the labeling. EKO builds cans, so its bags are specified against the thing they go into - 50 to 90 liters - and that is a far more actionable number than "21 gallon" when your can is sold in liters. It is also genuinely unscented, which matters more at this size than at eight gallons: a big can means a big surface of perfumed film in the room.

Twenty gallons is a size the bag aisle mostly skips, and the gap matters because a 20-gallon kitchen can gets its extra volume from height - 29 to 32 inches of it - so a 13-gallon bag physically cannot reach the rim. This is Hefty's answer: an extra-tall version of the Ultra Strong drawstring in an 80-count. Hefty's own claim on the listing is that it holds 50% more than its 13-gallon bag, which is the right way to read it. This is a taller bag, not a wider one.

Counts are the whole economic story at 20 gallons. Household brands sell this size in 80s at best and often in 20s, so the cost per bag runs well above the 13-gallon aisle. A 120-count fixes that. The stated 18-20 gallon fit is also a narrower and more honest claim than a bare "20 gallon", and narrow is what you want - a bag with too much slack slumps into the can, and one with too little will not fold over the rim.