Waste With Taste : Designer Trash Bags Spruce Up the Alleys of the Beautiful People

The garbage bothered Lisa Tanner--chicken bones, dripping cans, grease-stained papers, the discarded dregs of everyday life sitting in lumps in those ugly plastic bags.

“You know how you see those garbage bags down a street? It looked really tacky--the green bags, the white bags. Sort of plain, sort of dull.”

Tanner, a native of snooty Palm Beach, wanted to give trash some class. Her idea was certainly logical, perhaps decadent:

Designer trash bags.

“Only in Palm Beach,” said Tim Carew, manager of a Worth Avenue stationery shop that stocks the bags Tanner developed last year.

That’s not to say that the sacks are unique to the island playground of the rich and pampered. Tanner estimates that about 260 stores nationwide now carry them, and she claims that 50,000 of them were sold in five months--enough to pack a messy mountain of rubbish.

“Now, waste can have taste,” said Cynthia Thornton, Tanner’s publicist.

Six Sacks for $3

The suggested retail price is $3 for a package of six bags, wire ties included.

Each thick, vanilla-colored bag is adorned with one of eight prints: green palm trees, blue tennis rackets, pink palm trees, red sailboats, green golf flags, pink flower baskets, red Scotch terriers or pine-green alligators.

The alligators resemble the logo on the well-known Izod golf shirt.

Bags with such decoration are not just for garbage. They’re also good for toting damp bathing suits, sweaty workout clothing or soiled laundry.

“It looks a lot better than carrying a black garbage bag down the street,” Carew said.

Tanner’s husband, a utility supervisor, was reluctant to part with his first bag.

“He took the trash out, and he brought the bag back,” she said. “I said, ‘George, this is the third time. We’ve got more of these.’ ”

Thornton told of a garbage collector in Hilton Head, S.C., who found one of the colorful bags on his route one morning. He marched straight to the front door of the house and asked for an explanation.

Trash Man Impressed

“He said, ‘What is this joke? I’ve been working in this business 15 years.’ She said, ‘I was just trying to impress you.’ He tied it to his garbage truck and drove around with it all day,” Thornton said.

Tanner, 30, a former social worker and sales manager for a sportswear chain, has a degree in psychology. She lives in West Palm Beach, but grew up across the shimmering Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach.

“The idea really came to mind because she couldn’t stand her trash bags. She thought, ‘My God, why don’t I just make a beautiful designer trash bag?’ ” Thornton explained.

So she did, and the bags went on the market three weeks before Christmas.

“People loved them. They just have a fit over them,” Tanner said. “It was a gamble. We thought the worst that could happen would be we’d get stuck with trash bags for the rest of our lives.”

Sales Staff Deployed

The owner of Designer Trash Bags said that 75 peddlers on commission are deployed nationwide in the name of “good taste waste.” In April, she moved the company headquarters out of her home and into a small office, where she works with an assistant.

For the conscientious yuppie, Tanner is unfolding a smaller version of her work, the designer doggie bag. She said the lunch bag-sized sacks will be ready for next Christmas season.

“America is such a perfect country for humor items, especially one that’s useful,” Thornton said.

Carew suggested that the trash bags would make a great gag gift for a snob or a fussy “designer person” with a passion for chic brand names.

“It’s great for the person who thought he had everything.” she said.