Earth Rated Dog Poop Bags Review (2026): Compostable vs. Standard, Tested for 6 Months

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Dog poop bags are one of those daily-use items most people buy on autopilot. Earth Rated changed that calculation by making bags worth thinking about. I’ve tested both their compostable and standard bags for six months across two dogs (a 35-lb terrier mix and a 70-lb Lab) and can give you an honest comparison — including the parts of their marketing that need a closer read.

Why Earth Rated Dominates the Category

Earth Rated launched in Montreal in 2011 and built their initial reputation on two things: lavender scent (which actually works at close range) and bags that don’t split. Those basics sound simple, but generic store-brand bags fail at both with surprising frequency. Earth Rated’s build quality turned what should be a commodity item into a brand with genuine loyalty.

Their product line now spans four categories: standard polyethylene bags, compostable bags, extra-large bags, and dispensers. The differentiation that matters most environmentally is the standard vs. compostable question.

Compostable Bags: What the Certification Means

The Earth Rated compostable bags carry ASTM D6400 certification — the U.S. standard for compostability. This means:

• Third-party tested (not self-declared) to disintegrate to less than 10% of original material in 84 days under industrial composting conditions
• No toxic residue in the compost output
• The material is plant-based (not petroleum-derived)

What it doesn’t mean: home compostable. Industrial composters operate at sustained temperatures of 131°F+ that typical backyard bins can’t maintain. If you’re putting compostable bags in your backyard compost, they’ll still break down faster than conventional plastic, but you’re not getting the full certification benefit.

The practical infrastructure question: does your municipality accept pet waste in its compost program? In most U.S. cities, the answer is no. San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and a growing number of other cities do. Check before assuming.

What Happens in Landfill?

Most bags, compostable or not, end up in landfill. In landfill anaerobic conditions, decomposition rates for everything slow dramatically — including plant-based materials. The honest truth: Earth Rated compostable bags will break down faster in landfill than conventional PE bags, but the difference is measured in years vs. hundreds of years, not weeks. The microplastic benefit (compostable bags don’t shed microplastics) is real regardless of end destination.

Thickness and Reliability: The Main Job

Both Earth Rated versions are 15 microns thick. For reference: typical grocery store produce bags are 8–12 microns. Generic store-brand poop bags sold in bulk are often 10–12 microns. At 15 microns, Earth Rated bags reliably handle the following scenarios:

• Large, wet pickups on grass without splitting
• Picking up from pavement or sand (where thin bags are more likely to tear)
• Tying off a bag with two twists — the standard closure method

In six months of daily use across two dogs, I had one bag split on pickup, and it was during an unusually large pickup with a thick-bottomed bag that made sealing awkward. That’s an acceptable failure rate.

The Seal

Earth Rated bags use a simple tie-off design — no zip lock, no special closure, just the bag itself. Twist and tie the open end. The bags are long enough that after tying off a normal pickup, you still have 6–8 inches of bag above the knot, which gives you something to hold during the walk to the trash.

One note on compostable bags specifically: they’re slightly less stretch-resistant than polyethylene. If you try to wrap the bag tight around a pickup by stretching it aggressively, you may get small tears at the rim. The solution: don’t stretch. Use the bag normally — insert your hand, pick up, pull off, twist and tie. Standard technique works perfectly.

Scent Performance

The lavender scent is subtle from outside the packaging and noticeable from close range. The scent comes from the bag material itself, not a coating. It doesn’t fade significantly over the shelf life of a roll.

For owners sensitive to fragrance: the unscented version has no scent added to the material. It performs identically. Earth Rated also makes lavender-scented bags without dye (for people who prefer a clear bag to check the pickup before tying off — a legitimate practical preference).

The Extra Large Version

The 70-lb Lab required the extra large bags for anything larger than a small pickup. Standard Earth Rated bags technically work for any size dog, but for large breeds the extra large version is genuinely more comfortable — you get enough bag over your hand that you can close it properly without feeling like you’re cutting things close. The extra large bags are available in both standard and compostable versions.

Pricing and Value

The Earth Rated premium over generic bags is real. At $0.08/bag vs. $0.02/bag, you’re paying 4x more per bag for a product that doesn’t split and has genuine environmental credentials. For one dog on twice-daily walks with 2 bags per walk, that’s roughly 1,460 bags per year — about $117/year for compostable Earth Rated vs. $29 for generic. The $88/year premium is the cost of doing it right. Most Earth Rated users consider it reasonable.

Subscribe & Save on Amazon

Earth Rated’s 270-bag pack is available on Amazon Subscribe & Save, which brings the effective price down 5–15% depending on the discount tier. For a product you use reliably every day, setting this up is worth it. Subscribe & Save also means you never run out mid-week, which is its own quality-of-life benefit.

What Earth Rated Doesn’t Do

Earth Rated doesn’t have a take-back or closed-loop composting program. They don’t offer a free composting service for waste generated by their bags. The environmental improvement is real but stops at the point of sale — they’ve made a better bag, but the infrastructure to close the loop doesn’t exist at scale yet. That’s not an Earth Rated-specific failure; it’s the state of pet waste composting infrastructure in the U.S.

The Verdict

Earth Rated compostable bags are the right choice if industrial composting is accessible to you. If it isn’t, the compostable vs. standard decision is primarily about values (plant-based material vs. petroleum-based) and microplastics — both legitimate reasons to choose compostable even without the composting infrastructure. The standard bags are still meaningfully better than generic store-brand bags that fail at the basic job of not splitting.

Either way: Earth Rated is the category benchmark. The build quality, the scent option, the certified thickness — they’ve earned the dominant market position. Buy the 270-bag compostable bulk pack, set up a Subscribe & Save order, and move on to the parts of sustainable pet care that have higher environmental leverage.