Description
Hefty Ultra Strong 13 Gallon Trash Bags come 110 to a box, in pink, with a drawstring closure Hefty calls CinchSak and a licensed Fabuloso Watermelon fragrance built into the film. The manufacturer describes six features under the heading of six in one protection: flex strength, the drawstring, odor control, and resistance to leaks, punctures and rips.
What a tall kitchen bag has to do
Kitchen waste is the hardest thing a household bag handles. It is heavy, often wet, contains packaging with corners, and it sits in a warm room for several days before it goes out. A bag has to survive being loaded, then survive being lifted, and the second is where most failures happen, because lifting concentrates the whole load onto whatever you are holding.
Hefty addresses that with two things. Flex strength is the manufacturer’s description of a film engineered to stretch rather than tear, which spreads a point load across a wider area. The break resistant drawstring is the more visible feature: it gathers the mouth of the bag into a handle so you lift by the cord rather than by pinching film. Both are genuine design choices rather than marketing, though the specific strength claims are Hefty’s own and no test method is stated on the page.
The specification that is missing
For all the description of strength, this listing never states a thickness. Trash bag film is measured in mils, and that figure is the one specification that allows a buyer to compare one bag against another. Hefty describes these as its strongest tall kitchen garbage bags and offers a hundred percent satisfaction guarantee, and neither of those is a number. Without a mil rating, the strength claim cannot be checked against the Amazon Basics or Reli bags on the same shelf.
The listing also gives no flat dimensions for the bag, which is the other figure that decides whether a bag actually fits your can. Thirteen gallons is a nominal rating, and two bags of the same rating can differ enough that one grips the rim and the other slides in. The specification block holds package dimensions, a shipping weight of just over five pounds for 110 bags, a model number, a first availability date of April 2025 and ranking data placing it 100th among trash bags.
What odor control does and does not mean
The continuous odor control and extended scent release Hefty describes are fragrance in the film. That is worth being precise about, because odor control in this context means adding a smell that competes with the smell already there, not removing the source. A scented bag makes a kitchen more pleasant between collections; it does not slow down what is decomposing inside. If the smell is genuinely bad, the answer is emptying the can more often, rinsing it, and keeping food waste out of it, not a stronger fragrance.
The fragrance also has a downside worth naming. A perfumed bag releases scent into the kitchen continuously, including when the can is empty, and households sensitive to fragrance or those who dislike sweet synthetic scents will notice it immediately. This is a strongly scented product by design. The Fabuloso name and design are noted on the listing as trademarks of Colgate-Palmolive used under license.
What to put in them, and what not to
Ordinary kitchen refuse is the target: food packaging, paper, scraps, general household waste. The drawstring makes them suitable for the can that gets carried through a house to an outside bin, which is exactly where a failure is most inconvenient.
Even a strong kitchen bag has limits. Broken glass should be wrapped before it goes in, since a shard finds its way through film when a bag swings against a leg. Construction debris, garden waste with woody stems and anything with sharp metal edges call for a contractor grade bag instead. Hot ashes, smoldering material and liquid chemicals do not belong in a plastic bag at all. And heavy wet waste concentrates its weight at the base, so drain liquids before bagging rather than trusting any film to hold them.
Using them well, and the safety point
Two habits matter. Do not overfill: the drawstring needs enough film above the waste to gather into a cord, and the bag is strongest when the load sits low and wide rather than piled to the rim. And let the bag settle into the can rather than stretching it taut over the edge, because film held under tension before it is loaded starts nearer its limit.
Store the box somewhere dry and out of direct sun. Polyethylene degrades with heat and ultraviolet light over time, and a box left in a hot garage for a year is not the bag it was when new. A scented bag also loses fragrance faster in heat, so a cupboard at room temperature suits it better than a shelf above a radiator.
The safety point applies to any plastic film in a home with small children: a loose bag is a suffocation hazard, so keep the box out of reach and never leave a spare bag lying open on the floor. One more general rule, since this is a chemicals catalog: never pour a cleaning product into a trash bag to deal with a smell. Combining household chemicals in a confined bag is how gas builds up in a closed container, and the correct response to an odor is to empty and wash the can.
Cost per bag, and the alternatives
Cost per bag is the comparison to make, and 110 bags gives a clean divisor. What complicates it here is the missing thickness figure, because a cheaper bag at a stated 0.9 mil is a comparison you can actually make, while a bag described only as strongest is not. The scent and the drawstring are real features you are paying for, so decide whether you want them before comparing on price alone.
For an unscented drawstring bag with a published thickness, our review of the Amazon Basics 13 gallon drawstring bags gives a direct comparison. At the opposite end, the Reli SuperValue 13 gallon liners are a very thin bulk liner for light waste, and the simplehuman custom fit liners cover the case where a can requires a specific bag shape. The trash bags category lists the options together.
If your municipality collects food waste separately, a conventional scented bag is not permitted in that stream, and a certified compostable bag is required instead. Our write up of the Raytid compostable trash bags covers that, with more in the compost bags category.
Who should buy it, who should not
Buy the box if you want a robust drawstring kitchen bag and you actively want a scented one. Skip it if anyone in the household dislikes or reacts to fragrance, since the scent releases continuously and cannot be turned off, and skip it if you want to compare strength properly, because no thickness is published. For light waste in office bins, a much thinner and cheaper liner does the same job at a fraction of the cost.
