Walmart and Kohl's sold rayon as 'bamboo' for years — the FTC fined them $5.5M

For years Walmart and Kohl's sold sheets, towels and housewares labelled as 'bamboo', some advertised as environmentally friendly — produced 'free of harmful chemicals', with clean, non-toxic materials. In reality, the FTC said, the products were synthetic rayon: bamboo dissolved into fibre through a process that takes toxic chemicals and produces hazardous pollutants. The Textile Act requires labels to state the fibres a product contains, and rayon made from bamboo contains no bamboo fibre.

On 8 April 2022 the Department of Justice, on the FTC's behalf, filed complaints in federal court in Washington DC alleging both retailers had violated the Textile Act and the FTC Act since at least 2015 — and had kept the false advertising running after a 2010 FTC warning. The same day both settled: Walmart agreed to a $3 million civil penalty, Kohl's to $2.5 million — $5.5 million combined, at the time the largest penalties ever for bogus bamboo marketing, imposed through the FTC's Penalty Offense Authority. The stipulated orders permanently enjoin the deceptive green claims.

The FTC turned the case into its own consumer alert: if 'bamboo' sheets feel soft and silky, the bamboo has been chemically treated into rayon. For marketing teams the precedent ran wider — a retailer's own green claims carry the same liability as a manufacturer's.