I'm on a mission to save money at the moment (kind of contradictory considering the bath products I buy!) but anyway, I'm trying out a few of the supermarkets value products in all areas as I've found that in some cases not only are they half price but also just as good. On my last shop I bought these ASDA smart price bin liners. After all, all they need to do is line my bin so what could go wrong?


Appearance
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Like most bin liners these come with no packaging, just a roll of paper around the bags holding them together. The bags themselves are a white plastic rolled into a fairly thick roll. The paper is also white with a green stripe across the middle; it tells me that it's ASDA smart price and that the roll contains 80 swing bin liners.


The Use
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The liners themselves are a lot longer then you would expect. When I first tried to extract one from the roll I kept pulling and pulling, eventually ended up re-rolling it thinking I'd missed the perforated line only to realize I hadn't. The perforated area (when I found it!) is really obvious so you won't miss it.

Pulling the bags apart is quite tricky though, they don't separate very easily and so need quite a bit of force to pull them apart so maybe something to bear in mind if you, or whoever you are buying them for, has mobility problems in their hands/arms. Opening the bags is easy, on one side there is a darker area with a lighter area around the outside. The darker area is where the plastic is doubled over and this pattern is only on one side indicating the side that you should open them. Quickly rubbing this between two of your fingers will separate the plastic enabling you to easily open the bag in order to place it in your bin.

The liners are very large; our kitchen bin (the reason we bought these) is a standard pedal bin and the liners easily fill this and I would say that they would comfortably fill a bin twice this size. The liners easily expanded to fill the bin as things were put into it, as it was so large the edges of the liner stayed outside the bin itself so there was no faffing around with a liner that had fallen in.

So far so good I thought! That was, of course, before I tried to remove the liner. On removing even though there was a lot of plastic for me to grab and therefore reinforce the strength of the liner it still came apart in my hands. Also there was some liquid on the bottom of the bin itself and so I don't think it's completely waterproof when stretched. This meant that I needed to disinfect the bin every time it was emptied due to the lack of protection provided by the liner.

Doubling up the liners does combat both these problems - nothing leaked through when they were doubled up and it didn't split when pulling the bag out. However this does lead to a lot of wastage as I was using twice as many bags!

So (as you've probably already guessed!) I'm not recommending these bags. They offer little to no protection for your bin unless doubled up which means a lot of wastage. You're better off spending that little bit more on the next range up.


Price And Availability
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Being an ASDA product these are only available from ASDA. There are 80 bags in the roll and they cost 90p making it 1.1p per liner (2.2p if you double them).


Other Information
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Being an ASDA product this is covered by the ASDA guarantee which states that if you are not completely happy with it they will refund and replace the purchase. (Maybe I should take them up on that!)


Contact Information
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www.asda.com

Asda Stores Limited,
Asda House,
Great Wilson Street,
Southbank
LS11 5AD

Telephone: 0800 952 6060
Fax: 0113 241 7732