Design

Swedish company's 'endless' garbage bag is a game-changer

Meet Longopac.

Longopac / Paxxo

As a species, we need to get creative with trash, otherwise, we might eventually choke the planet with it. A Swedish company called Paxxo has a clever take on the average garbage bag that extends its utility to the max while cutting down on waste. Dubbed the Longopac, Paxxo's garbage bag takes the standardized bag format and stretches it to 410 feet in length.

The garbage "can" is less of a bin and more of a receptacle that comes with the bag. Once you've placed the bag inside in the receptacle, you can fill it up to however much you want and cut it off at the top, tie it shut, and throw it out. The bag comes in different sizes, lengths, and colors, which is helpful if you have different purposes for different bags. This is how it works:

Friend to the environment — According to Paxxo, "The bags are manufactured from three-ply polyethylene-low material consumption and [offer] high strength. Independent life cycle analysis shows less than 1/3 koldioxid compared to traditional bags. [The bags are also] lower weight and [their] more compact packing gives less transport cost."

If you ask us, it looks like a mix between a one-size-fits-any condom in bag form and Saran wrap, and we love it.

Longopac / Paxxo

Make the bags disintegrate next, please — Paxxo calls their creation "endlessly clever" and while we can't vouch for that, it's definitely a creative spin on the average garbage-bag-and-can setup. Because though we try to only take out the trash when it's full... sometimes that's just not feasible. Sometimes we dispose of something foul or food scraps that can't be composted and will be foul soon enough, and we have to throw the bag out even if's only half full.

Whether it's on an individual level or at a much larger scale — like, say a hospital or restaurant setting — this kind of practice can be wasteful and costly. Constantly throwing out bags that aren't full not only wastes money, it also puts more unnecessary plastic into landfills.

We hope to be able to buy this soon, preferably in a miniaturized, cupboard-under-the-sink form factor.