I Bought The Trashie Take Back Bag — Is it Worth it?

My algorithms have me nailed down. Pretty much everywhere I ‘travel’ on the internet is funded by a wide variety of eco-friendly brands. A digital footprint of looking up science communication content for a blog has made me the perfect target audience for every single green solution, whether it’s greenwashing or not. In the past few weeks, I have been inundated by a brand called Trashie, a clothing recycling service who have been suddenly in my inbox, my search engine ads, YouTube, and all about social media.

Intrigued and deeply curious (and in need of another round of spring cleaning), I caved and purchased a single bag to try it out. Their marketing seemed pretty convincing and reviews seemed decent so I thought, “Eh, the worst-case scenario is I pay $20 to get rid of some clothes”. So, I gave in to the dreaded algorithm marketing and made my way to their website. Here’s what I discovered:

The Good Parts of Trashie:

The Website:

Immediately, the website gave me an excellent first impression. There’s solid attention to detail with each page, their team very clearly has some experience in design — it doesn’t feel like a stock website or like one of those ‘over-designed’ websites.

It’s also lovely how transparent the company is with exactly what they do with clothing. The information about their grading of clothing and how they recycle made me feel rather confident that everything I sent would be put to better use than collecting dust in my closet. The purchase itself was remarkably easy. The entire process on the site felt quick and efficient, with plenty of information available about all of the questions I had.

The Rewards:

The rewards that are available on the site vary in cost, generally from $1 — $20 TCH, which is the currency you receive once you scan the QR code on your bag. With each bag purchased, you gain $30, so you’ll be able to receive at least 2 discounted rewards — with some rare exceptions.

Once you receive your bag, you gain the rewards to your account as soon as you scan the QR code on the outside of it. There’s no need to wait for them to receive the bag or even for you to ship it. Hypothetically, someone could purchase the bag and get the rewards without ever getting rid of clothing.

I was delighted to find that the rewards included a number of trustworthy eco-friendly companies I recognized and had previously shopped from, including Allbirds, Pela Case, Lomi, and Blueland. The rewards are mostly $10-$20 off of purchases, but there are also a couple of percent-off coupons, free samples, and bundle add-ons. For the most part, you’re paying to get a decent coupon for a store that you may already be interested in purchasing from. Make sure there’s a store you’re interested in in the Trashie Rewards List before going through with the purchase of a bag.

With the single bag I purchased, I was able to get these discounts:

• Free Discount for Four Sigmatic | Not yet redeemed
• $10 Off at Zero Waste Store for 10 TCH | Total Spent $54.89
• $20 Off at Viori for 20 TCH | Total Spent $19.50

Getting the rewards themselves is remarkably easy and quick — they really have this portion of their site optimized to the tee. I was really satisfied with how easy it was to get coupon codes and apply them to my shopping carts.

The Take Back Bag

The bag itself comes neatly folded in a recyclable, paper envelope. The ‘unboxing’ is simple, with no additional supplies included except for the bag, which has all the information you need printed directly on the outside. Easy-peasy. This sort of experience is great, as there isn’t much superfluous nonsense that has to be thrown away. Any of the additional information that I needed in the process was available on that great website of theirs that I previously mentioned.

Opening it up, the bag is high quality and doesn’t seem like the sort of package one would have to worry about breaking during shipment. Truthfully, it seems like the sort of bag that might be reusable — though I wasn’t able to find what Trashie does with these bags once they receive them. On the other hand, however, it boasts that it is fully made of recycled materials — so they’re seemingly sticking to their brand identity of eco-friendliness with this bag at least somewhat.

The Shipping Process

Trashie also accepts a wide variety of materials, which makes it very easy to fill it up quickly. I was able to load mine with towels, old socks, worn-out and torn clothing, and more! In total, my bag ended up weighing a whopping total of roughly 10 lbs. and was filled to the brim when I sent it out. As luck would have it, the amount of stuff I wanted to get rid of was just about the size of one of these bags. I’d say that, if the amount of cloth you want to get rid of wouldn’t fit well in a laundry hamper, you might want to get multiple of the bags. Fortunately, they seem to have BOGO sales every so often, which makes this a smidge more reasonable.

Once your bag is filled and ready to go, the shipping part is pretty easy. On the bag itself is a QR code that you can scan to print out a shipping label or show to USPS so they can ship it for you. I elected to print out the shipping label myself and schedule a pickup from my apartment. Now, the bag is rather large and conspicuous — I recommend being mindful of this if your neighborhood is plagued by porch pirates. But, otherwise, this part of the process is delightfully painless.

The Parts of Trashie That Need Improvement:

Waiting for the Bag to Arrive

Once purchased, the receipt informed me that the item would arrive without a tracking number, as it was sent in a smaller envelope that fits most mailboxes. They estimated about 7–14 business days, and it arrived right on time to fit that window — 10 business days in total. Still, it would have been nice to be supplied with a tracking number, so I can be certain of when I need to check my mailbox for it. I was fortunate enough to have this portion run smoothly but I can imagine that, should your package arrive late or get lost in the mail, not having a tracking number could be deeply frustrating.

Reward Shopping

Despite being able to personally select some eco-friendly and under-consumption investment products through the rewards, I was a little disappointed at the options and how much money you need to spend to get your ‘reward’. A good selection of the coupons required hefty purchases up to hundreds of dollars from the store, whereas others only allowed the coupons to be allowed for full-price items. I had planned to purchase a PELA phone case, for example, but decided against it when the terms said that it could be only used on non-sale items, and, when I navigated to the site to check out the products, found that there was a site-wide sale with everything at discount (The discount was a better deal than the coupon from Trashie).

Unfortunately, there are also some fast fashion options attached to the rewards section of the website. They’re definitely a minority, but the coupons on the site aren’t fully safe, green markets to wholeheartedly trust. Before purchasing a reward with your TC, I’d definitely recommend looking up the eco-friendliness of the brand. It would also be beneficial to look at the website and check out what you would possibly want before redeeming your TCH.

I also found it rather odd that there was an additional way to earn cash by shopping at big-name stores like GAP and Walmart. For a company so into the idea of making clothing and fabric more ethical, it seems odd to me that they have a partnership with fast fashion brands, going so far as incentivizing their customer base to spend their money there. I suppose, Trashie makes more money if people continue to treat clothes in the fast-fashion way, but it seems opposed to their whole mission statement. It would make more sense if the company pushed an under-consumption sort of message — as the procedure stands, the initiative of Trashie feels performative.

Paying to Be Virtuous

There’s also the issue of price. It costs $20 for a single bag, plus shipping. You can discount that price by setting up a subscription or purchasing multiple bags at once, but it can be difficult to justify that expense when, say, the Goodwill down the street will accept your unwanted clothing for free. Yes, there’s a lower likelihood that all of your clothes will be recycled, but for those who can’t afford to pay money to get rid of their goods, this price can feel like a barrier to entry into the eco-friendly space.

Competitor brands who mostly do the same process, like ThredUp, for example, they take their cut out of the price that they’re able to make off of your clothes within the time window they allot, making it so that you don’t have to pay if your clothing isn’t worth it unless you purchase one of their add-ons. There are also options from other brands, ThredUp included, that let you donate unwanted clothing for free, some of which even provide additional donations to charities of your choice, instead of giving you coupons.

If that $20 price tag gives you pause, I definitely recommend looking for alternative options. There are a ton of local businesses that could make use of old clothes, including pet shelters, recycling centers, and shelters for the unhoused. Trashie is really only worth it if you would rather spend $20 than drive around your city to find spots that will accept your donations. It’s a company for people of the income bracket where their money is less valuable than their time.

Lack of Metrics

In the ‘good’ portion of this review, I mentioned how incredible a lot of the upfront transparency was with Trashie. Though they make it very clear what they will do with what they receive, certainly, they don’t do much beyond that. As soon as I scanned the bag before I even started filling it, the website let me know my impact:

In other words, they provide you with an average and don’t go too far into specifics.

Once you’ve sent off your bag, it seems like you don’t hear any follow-up about what they did with your clothing. It would be incredible to have more transparency in this process, with a focus on your individual impact or where your content went. (I’ll update this section if I do hear from the company about my bag’s specific impact sometime in the future).

Additionally, I found it a little odd that they don’t seem to have a personal company statement on their impact and general eco-friendliness. For a website and company so dedicated to being a part of an eco-friendly solution, it would make total sense to also provide a summary of what benefits they’ve caused, how much clothing they’ve recycled, etc. I wish that their site had more information on this, at the very least making a statement annually on the help they’ve done.

Without this data, it feels as if the company is a corporation masquerading as a charity.

A Missed Marketing Opportunity

This is a nitpick, but the ex-marketer in me has to mention it. This solution could be of much use to businesses, and I was surprised to see that the site didn’t have much marketing towards B2B initiatives. A business that goes through cloth regularly could greatly benefit from purchasing a subscription, and perhaps even use the resulting rewards they receive as a means to reward employees or make business supply purchases. If set up correctly by the company, I could totally see it becoming a service connected with eco-friendly-focused second-hand stores (or stores that want to improve their carbon footprint for PR). Trashie, y’all should really get on this.

The Takeaway:

So, is the Trashie Take Back Bag worth it? I’d say, it depends on who you are — namely, your income bracket. If you can afford to spend the money without batting an eye and are searching for the most ethical, eco-friendly way possible to clear out your packed closet, this can be a simple, viable solution that rewards you with opportunities to start making the switch toward consuming eco-friendly stores instead of fast-fashion ones. It’s also a great choice if you are interested in discovering new, eco-friendly brands to begin a journey towards being a more ‘green’ consumer.

If, however, you are in the anti-consumption part of your eco-friendly journey, this isn’t the right call, as it will incentivize you to replace what you’ve gotten rid of with more purchases from their partner brands. There are a few more service-focused rewards like meal plan services, but the majority of the content is clothing, accessories, or other goods, at least at the time of writing this. Plus, if this sort of purchase would in any way be a financial strain, some alternatives may better serve you.

Personally, I wouldn’t have purchased it if I couldn’t have written it off in my taxes for this article. On a writer’s salary, it isn’t quite worth the cost.

–

Have you tried out the Trashie Take Back Bag? Have a different opinion? Want me to deep dive into another product? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Let me know in the comments :)

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Trashie or the Take Back Bag and am not receiving commissions from any sales made due to this article. This blog is my personal opinion and is, by no means, funded by anyone but by readers like you. Thank you!

--

Cross-Posted from Medium :)