Biodegradable Trash Bags Not Made of Natural Materials, Class Action Lawsuit Claims

A New Jersey man has filed a class action lawsuit against the maker of ECOsmart biodegradable trash bags, which he says are not actually made of natural materials.

Menachem Cohen says he purchased a package of ECOsmart bags from the company’s e-commerce store on Amazon.com in September based on claims made on the product’s packaging and in its marketing. The labels and promotional information say the bags are 100% natural, biodegradable, and eco-friendly. But when he received his order, and did some research on the materials used to make them, Cohen learned the bags are made, in part, from chemicals, he says.

For that reason, Cohen and his lawyers filed a federal class action lawsuit against the manufacturer in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on Dec. 2. They are seeking to represent a Class of other customers who purchased the ECOsmart bags based on the company’s having  advertised them to be all natural and biodegradable.

Cohen claims that Repellem Consumer Products Corporation, which does business as ECOsmartplastics and sells the bags under the ECOsmart and Repellem brand names, has violated the New York Consumer Protection from Deceptive Acts and Practices Act and General Business Law.

“Plaintiff is sensitive to the ‘green footprint,’ purchased [the ECOsmart] bags for that reason, and is disappointed and takes great umbrage at RCP’s false advertising of bags as 100% Natural, biodegradable and eco-friendly,” the class action lawsuit states.

The ECOsmart and Repellem biodegradable trash bags are “essentially the same bag except that Repellem bags contain a scent designed to keep pests away, or repel them, according to Cohen’s class action lawsuit.

Cohen says that while using the ECOsmart bags, he “learned from a legend on the back of package that the bags are not 100% natural (as represented) because their primary component is a polyethylene known as LLDPE,” the class action lawsuit claims.

The material in question, linear low density polyethylene, is a thermoplastic that is produced at low temperatures and at high pressure using “alpha-olefins butene, hexene or octene,” the class action lawsuit states. Through what’s called a copolymerization process, the raw materials are transformed into the LLDPE polymer.

At its most basic level, the process used to transform the ingredients into the trash bags makes them a chemical product, not a natural one, Cohen argues in the class action lawsuit. As such, the bags cannot lawfully be advertised or otherwise promoted as being 100% natural.

The Federal Trade Commission “has made clear that an ingredient is synthetic and not natural when it does not naturally occur; and what is synthetic … cannot lawfully be marketed as natural,” the class action claims.

Moreover, the plaintiff says the ECOsmart and Repellem biodegradable bags “cannot and do not decompose within even five years in landfills.”

“Wherever a consumer may look for information regarding [the] bags, the same deceptive and false claims are featured,” Cohen’s class action lawsuit says. “The promotion, marketing, advertising and labeling of [the] bags is a flagrant, multi- faceted violation of New York’s consumer deception law.”

Have you ever purchased ECOsmart of Repellem biodegradable trash bags because you believed them to be 100% natural and environmentally friendly? Would you have purchased them if you were aware they were made of chemically derived materials? Tell us about it in the comment section below.

Lead plaintiff Cohen and the proposed Class Members are represented by March Schlachet of The Law Offices of Mark Schlachet.

The Biodegradable Trash Bags Class Action Lawsuit is Menachem Cohen, et al. v. Repellem Consumer Products Corporation, et al., Case No. 2:20-cv-05830-JMA-ST. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Read About More Class Action Lawsuits & Class Action Settlements:

• Consumers Duped by Thayers Natural Remedies, Says Class Action Lawsuit
• Costco Class Action Lawsuit Says Optifiber Supplement Isn’t Natural
• Wrongful Death or Bodily Injuries: Are You One of the Thousands Affected by Faulty Surgical Staples?
• What Is a Telemarketing Auto Dialer?