Kohl's sold rayon as bamboo and eco-friendly — the FTC fined it $2.5M for the deception

Kohl's, the American department-store chain, marketed at least two dozen textile products — apparel and home goods — as made of bamboo, in both product titles and descriptions, and promoted some as environmentally friendly, even 'free of harmful chemicals, using clean, non-toxic materials.' Walmart did the same. The fabrics were not bamboo in any meaningful sense: they were rayon derived from bamboo, which the companies did not disclose.

The distinction mattered. Turning bamboo into rayon requires toxic chemicals and produces hazardous pollutants — the opposite of the eco-friendly image the marketing suggested. The Federal Trade Commission said the claims were deceptive, and that the products had been mislabeled in violation of the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act as well as advertised falsely under the FTC Act.

On 8 April 2022 Kohl's agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle the charges; Walmart paid $3 million, $5.5 million between them — by far the largest penalties the FTC had brought in this area. The agency used its Penalty Offense Authority, which lets it seek civil penalties once a company has been warned in a prior written decision that a practice is unlawful.

The case was a lesson in how literally a regulator reads a green claim. 'Made from bamboo' sounded natural and sustainable; the process behind it was neither. The marketing borrowed the goodwill of an eco-friendly material the product did not actually deliver, and the FTC priced the gap.