We’ve been meaning to do a Stasher Bags write-up for awhile now. We are huge fans of these silicone food bags. They will completely replace single-use sandwich bags and other plastic bags for food storage in your home. They are a great sustainable choice.
And Moms love them! Like, really love them!
If you’re trying to beef up your environmental credentials and want to create a more sustainable lifestyle then there’s one thing for certain – you’ve got to start by eliminating the use of excessive amounts of plastic in your life. This is critical.
That’s where the Stasher Reusable Bags come in.
What Are Stasher Reusable Silicone Bags?
A Stasher is essentially a silicone version of plastic bag of the kind you might put sandwiches, or meat for the fridge or even in a sous vide, or vegetables in. We’re sure you get the general drift here.
The difference is that they’re not “plastic” in the traditional sense, but they’re made out of silicone which is much harder wearing than plastic.
How much harder wearing?
Well, according to Stasher they’re good for several thousand uses. That’s one long-lasting storage bag.
Which they really ought to be because these things are really not cheap. They’re about $12 each and that’s a lot more than a box of disposable bags in our local store.
In fact, after a quick check on Amazon.com it appears, we can buy 300 disposable bags for $7.49 using one of their own brand products.
That means 1 Stasher bag costs the same as 480.64 Amazon throwaway bags.
Now, if their claim of thousands of uses is true – this is a pretty sweet deal as it ought to reduce our long-term spending on plastic bags as well as helping us save the environment.
What Makes Stasher Reusable Silicone Bags A Good Choice For Your Home?
The first (and best) reason to choose Stasher Reusable Silicone Bags is that it’s environmentally friendly to do so.
Single-use plastic bags are really bad and worse, they aren’t easy to clean and re-use and we’ve found that even the most careful use won’t keep them around for very long in a usable condition. Plus, they aren’t really dishwasher safe.
Stasher claims that these bags are “endlessly reusable” a claim which is impossible to test but we are going to assume that they mean “these can be reused far more than a thousand times” which is something that we can test.
The good thing is they are dishwasher safe.
Another good reason to buy a Stasher Reusable Silicone Bag is that it’s TSA compliant. Airport friendly storage bags!
Which means you can stuff things in it and then take it on a plane and unlike a disposable bag, the silicone is pretty thick – so, you can expect the contents to stay in the Stasher rather than in your luggage.
They Are Super Easy To Seal
They’re easy to seal too – the use a Pinch-locTM system and it works very well, you can actually fill the bag with water and then pinch it closed and it stays well sealed.
At least, it does, until you turn it upside down, then it leaks a little.
However, we don’t envision a day when we’d want to carry water in a bag and it’s certainly better at this than an actual plastic bag.
We also found that this bag works just fine in a sous vide and that’s really good news because we love sous vide cookery but always feel bad about throwing out the bags at the end of the process.
Future Improvements?
We feel that the standard size of these bags needs to be a bit bigger, we know that they’re emulating a standard sandwich bag but… we feel that at $12, we’d expect to get a bit more in the bag than that standard sandwich bag allows for.
Also, it would help with sous vide (though we hear rumours that a bigger bag is on the way for this).
We’re also not that impressed with the way they handle wear and tear.
Sure, they may be “endlessly reusable” but they start to look a bit “tatty” after a few uses and we think that a bag you’re going to take out of the home ought to be attractive to look at.
Also, just like their plastic equivalents, they’re a bit of a pain to wash by hand. Sure, you can wash a Stasher by hand but really – a dishwasher is an essential for ensuring they get really clean.
Otherwise, you may need to go and buy a silicone brush and keep it in your bag for when you take sandwiches to work in the Stasher Reusable Silicone Bag.
Finally, we just want to make a minor whine about the time it takes for the interior of these bags to dry. You may well want to give them a thorough scrub with a towel if you want to use them on the same day as you washed them.
How Do Stasher Bags Bear Up Under Normal Use?
What we found was that the bags bear up very well in terms of retaining their functionality and we didn’t have any reason to doubt that they would continue to do so for a long time in the future.
However, we did find that they started to look worn almost immediately and we found that slightly off-putting.
It is impossible to test “endless reusability” in anyone’s lab but we did give these bags an artificial test which involved simulating making them dirty and then washing them before reusing them for a few hundred uses.
Why Stasher?
We feel that if you’re looking to eliminate single use plastic bags from your life then you need to start buying Stasher Reusable Silicone Bags.
They’re very cool and the fact that they really are capable of being used over and over again is great.
We find that the sous vide capability really adds some substantial additional value in our kitchen, and, in fact, we’ve now got a stack of the Stasher Reusable Silicone Bags just for this.
However, we’d really like to see the next generation become a little more “wear-resistant” because they look a bit battered now.
