Green

Bag Company in Trouble

Biodegradable plastic bags seem to be the solution thus far for part of the plastic problem. In Australia, Goody Environment claimed to have hit upon that solution and vigorously promoted its product. Al seemed to be going well, until now.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is taking Goody Environment and its distributor NuPak to courts over false claims. The commission claims that both companies were engaged in making false representations regarding their product. Goody has responded by saying that they stand behind their product all the way. In fact they are quite confident that the courts will see things their way.

The confidence mainly stems from independent testing results as well as the Australian Standards compliance statement that they possess for the product. However, further investigation has revealed that the statement is not valid for the plastic bags. In fact Flinders University, where the tests were conducted, has stated that the tests were carried out on potato sacks produced by the company and not the plastic bags in question. The university has requested the company to remove the statement displayed on the website.

Further damning evidence was produced by a Belgian company which carried out testing on the bags. They discovered that the bags had not even begun deteriorating after 12 weeks. Going by Goody’s claims, the bag should have completely turned to compost at that point. Goody has responded to this by saying that this is all a result of a witch-hunt conducted by competitors.

The worrying factor, though, is that over 60 million bags were distributed in the country on the strength of Goody’s claims.