Consensus Among FTC Commissioners On Green Claims Appears To Be Biodegrading

On Monday, the FTC Commissioners issued an opinion and Final Order, finding that ECM BioFilms, Inc. ("ECM") made false, misleading, and unsubstantiated environmental claims about its chemical additive product.  According to the FTC's Complaint filed in October 2013, ECM's advertisements and marketing materials claimed its product would cause plastics using its additive to: (i) biodegrade in a landfill within nine months to five years; and (ii) make the product biodegradable.  The Complaint also alleged that ECM made deceptive establishment claims and that ECM provided the means and instrumentalities to its customers to make deceptive statements to consumers about finished products.  We've written previously about similar challenges to biodegradability.  What makes this opinion notable is the disagreement among the Commission about what claims can be inferred from an unqualified claim that a product is biodegradable, the reliability of a relatively new survey