In this review
The real test of any poop bag is the cold morning. February, twenty-three degrees, my 70-pound lab has already produced something generous, and I am working the bag open with one gloved hand while holding a leash with the other. That is where cheap bags fail. The plastic goes brittle, the tear line rips crooked, and you end up with a half-open sleeve flapping in the wind while your dog looks at you like you are the problem.
Earth Rated’s 270-count lavender refill rolls have been in that cold-morning rotation for four months. They are also, depending on which week you check, the best-selling dog poop bag on Amazon with 245,000-plus ratings at 4.8 stars. Popularity doesn’t prove much, but it means a lot of people are picking up a lot of waste with these, which gives me something to measure my own experience against.
Earth Rated Dog Poop Bags 270-Count Lavender
Extra-thick 13” x 9” bags, 65% post-consumer recycled plastic, lavender scented, with a “3 bags left” sticker on every roll. Made by a B Corp. Around $27 for 270 bags, which works out to roughly ten cents per bag. Durable enough to reuse mid-walk, long enough to tie one-handed, and the scent is not the migraine trigger I feared.
Rating breakdown
The durability argument
I ran these against two baselines. First, the free thin-film bags my apartment stocks in the wall dispensers, which I’ll call the failure floor. Second, a no-name 1,000-count roll I once bought in a panic that left my hands smelling like warm plastic. Earth Rated sits comfortably above both.
Over about 240 bags worth of walks, I had zero tears on extraction and zero leaks on tie. Not “mostly zero.” Actually zero. The bag is thick enough that I can feel the difference when I pull one off the roll. It has weight. My lab is a healthy, regular producer, and on the messier days, the bag still tied cleanly without threatening to split.
Each bag is 13 inches by 9 inches. That length matters. A short bag forces you to tie close to the contents, which is fine until it isn’t. With these, I have enough slack to loop the top twice for a secure knot and still have room. For a big dog, that margin is the difference between a clean handoff and a bad Tuesday.
A Cane Corso owner in the Amazon reviews put it in one line: holds the weight without feeling like it will break. That matches what I saw. If you own a large breed, this is the part that matters most.
The tear-line detail nobody explains
Every poop bag roll has a perforated tear line. Most of them are an afterthought. You pull, the bag tears crooked, and now you have a zigzag opening that won’t stay closed while you work.
Earth Rated’s perforation pulls straight almost every time. I did not count precisely, but out of roughly 240 pulls, I had maybe four or five crooked tears, all on very cold mornings when I was pulling too fast with gloves. Once, twice, three perforated lines in a row, and the bag comes off clean, ready to open. One-handed. With a leash-tugging 70-pound animal on the other end.
The bags are also marked so you know which end is the opening side. Sounds minor. Is not minor. If you have ever stood in the rain rotating a black poop bag trying to figure out which way is up, you know the feeling. This detail saves about six seconds per pickup. Six seconds with a cold, impatient dog is a meaningful amount of time.
The “3 bags left” sticker
I almost don’t want to mention this, because on paper it sounds like a gimmick. In practice, after four months of using the rolls, I would pay extra for it.
On every roll, the last three bags have a small sticker that reads “3 bags left.” That is the entire feature. No app, no notification, no lecture about sustainability. Just a sticker that gives you a heads-up before you run out.
The first time I saw the sticker was a Thursday night. I mentally noted that I needed to load a new roll before morning, and avoided the classic scenario where you realize mid-walk that you are out of bags and have to improvise with a grocery receipt. Small design choice. Solves a real problem. I suspect the people leaving five-star reviews about this detail feel the same way.
The lavender question
The scent is the most polarizing part of the product, and the one I was most skeptical of going in. Scented plastic has a bad reputation in pet gear, usually earned. Either the scent is industrial and headache-inducing, or it is so faint it does nothing.
Earth Rated’s lavender is neither. It is noticeable when you first pull a bag off the roll, soft once the bag is tied, and gone by the time the bag is in the trash. My main worry was the layering: tie in a hot summer moment and you get a lavender-and-waste bouquet worse than either smell alone. That did not happen. The scent covers the opening moment, not the contents.
If you are scent-sensitive, Earth Rated sells an unscented version at the same price. Get that. The durability and the sticker feature are identical across scent variants. Lavender is a preference, not a quality marker.
What the eco claims actually mean
Earth Rated markets these as made with 65% certified post-consumer recycled plastic, and notes the company is B Corp certified. That is not the same as compostable or biodegradable, and Earth Rated does not claim it is. A few Amazon reviewers conflate the two, so here is the honest read.
These bags are plastic. They will sit in a landfill for a long time. The recycled content diverts plastic that would have gone there anyway into a second use, which is a real environmental benefit, just a modest one. Earth Rated says the program diverts over five million pounds of landfill-bound plastic per year, which I cannot independently verify, but the number is consistent with the scale these sales suggest.
If you want genuinely compostable bags, look at BioBag or similar. Be warned that compostable bags tear more easily, cost more per bag, and still need industrial composting to actually break down. Most municipal composters do not accept dog waste, so the “compostable” label on a bag that ends up in a landfill is mostly cosmetic.
Earth Rated’s position is the honest middle. Better than virgin plastic. Not a solution to the landfill problem. Priced like a regular premium bag, not double.
Value math, such as it is
At around $27 for 270 bags, you’re paying roughly ten cents per bag. My lab produces output twice a day, so this pack lasts me about four and a half months. About $6 a month for bags. Cheaper grocery-store and Amazon options run in the three- to six-cent range per bag. The thin-film alternatives might save you $3 a month.
For $3 a month, you get a bag that tears crooked, leaks occasionally, and has no “3 bags left” warning. That math is easy. Earth Rated pays for itself in bad days avoided.
If you don’t mind committing, they sell 600-bag and 900-bag boxes that drop the per-bag cost into the seven- or eight-cent range. I’d buy the larger size on my next reorder.
What could be better
Three honest gripes.
These bags are not compostable. For buyers who want a lower-impact option and are willing to pay for it, Earth Rated does make a certified compostable line under a separate SKU. The lavender 270-count I’m reviewing here is not that product. Read the SKU carefully.
Scent is a commitment. Four months in, I don’t notice the lavender anymore, because I am used to it. Guests who grab a bag to take my dog out sometimes comment on it. Anyone with fragrance sensitivity should go unscented.
A roll dispenser is sold separately. The Earth Rated holder is solid, but you’re adding another $8 to the setup if you don’t already own one. Most aftermarket dispensers fit these rolls, but the first one you try might not. Mine from a competing brand fits, but it was a lucky test.
These are not the cheapest bags you can buy, and that is the only argument against them. Everything else about the design, from the straight-pulling tear line to the opaque-but-translucent film to the little sticker on the last three bags, feels like the product of a company that has thought carefully about what the actual walk looks like.
My dog, for what it’s worth, has no opinion about the bag. He watches me work, does his patient spin, and heads home. That is the correct amount of attention a poop bag should get. The best ones disappear into the routine. These do.
For more dog gear tested in real walks, see our full dogs category.
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