No. 7 Beauty’s “Biodegradable” Lie

What Was Actually Sold

There is a particular kind of betrayal in being lied to by your own good intentions.

You are standing in Walgreens or scrolling Amazon. You are trying to make a slightly less destructive choice in a world that keeps telling you individual consumer decisions matter. You see the word “biodegradable” printed large on the front of the package. You pick up the No. 7 Beauty wipes instead of a competitor. You spend your money. You feel, briefly, like you did something right.

That feeling was manufactured. Boots Retail USA put that word on the front of the packaging to harvest it from you. Not because the product would actually biodegrade in any timeframe that matters to the planet, but because market research confirms that environmentally conscious consumers will pay a price premium for products they believe are sustainable. Half to two-thirds of consumers, according to National Retail Federation surveys cited in the lawsuit, say they will pay more for sustainable products. No. 7 Beauty positioned itself to collect that premium without delivering the environmental benefit behind it.

The three women who filed this lawsuit, Cathy Rosa from the Bronx, Stacy Feldbrandt from Nassau County, and Clair Awad also from Nassau County, all say the same thing in their individual statements: they trusted the label. They understood “biodegradable” to mean what most people understand it to mean. That after they tossed the wipe in the trash, it would break down naturally within a reasonably short period of time. That understanding is not naive. It is exactly what the word “biodegradable” has always communicated, and it is exactly what the FTC says a reasonable consumer is entitled to expect from an unqualified biodegradable claim.

Instead, those wipes are in a landfill right now. Sealed in an anaerobic environment designed to prevent decomposition. They will be there for decades. The packaging that told you they were eco-friendly will outlast most of the living things on the surface above it.

Legal Receipts: The Documents Don’t Lie

The complaint draws heavily on the FTC’s own published guidance and prior enforcement actions. This is not a case where the standard is ambiguous.

Public Deception: The Label vs. the Science

The complaint documents a structured gap between what No. 7 Beauty communicated to consumers and what the scientific and regulatory record shows about landfill biodegradation.

• What was claimed: “Biodegradable” in large text on the front of both the Biodegradable Makeup Removing Wipes and the Biodegradable Cleansing Wipes. What is documented: The wipes end up in landfills when disposed of in household trash, and landfills do not present conditions for complete decomposition within a reasonably short period of time under the FTC standard of one year.
• What was claimed on the back label (Cleansing Wipes): “Tested to be biodegradable including landfill.” What the fine print actually reveals: The test cited is EN13432, which is a European industrial composting standard. It does not test or certify landfill biodegradability. The back label also directs consumers to dispose of the wipes with household waste, which routes them to landfills, not composting facilities.
• What the test citations implied: That the ASTM D5511-18 and EN13432 standards validate a biodegradable-in-landfill claim. What the scientific literature cited in the complaint states: “There are no current specifications that define mineralization rates that a plastic should reach in order to be labeled as ‘biodegradable in anaerobic digestion’ or ‘biodegradable in landfill’,” making meaningful comparison between materials impossible.
• What the packaging implies about disposal: The back of the packaging directs consumers in all capitals to dispose of the wipes “with household waste.” What that means in practice: Household waste goes to municipal solid waste landfills. Landfills have an anaerobic environment. The complaint notes that peer-reviewed research documents decomposition at most sites extending over 20 years or more due to low moisture input.

Regulatory Gray Zones: The Asterisk Defense

No. 7 Beauty exploited a known gap between what the FTC’s Green Guides require and how aggressively that guidance is enforced, betting that the asterisk system would provide legal cover.

• The FTC’s Green Guides are guidance documents, not regulations with automatic enforcement triggers. Companies can violate their standards without facing immediate penalties. No. 7 Beauty’s use of fine-print asterisks referencing testing standards represents a strategy of technical compliance theater: adding qualifications that are too buried, too technical, and too contradicted by the disposal instructions to function as meaningful consumer disclosures.
• The EN13432 standard is a European certification for industrial composting. No. 7 Beauty cited it as evidence of biodegradability “including landfill.” The complaint documents that the standard explicitly governs industrial composting processes, not landfill conditions. Citing it as landfill validation is, the lawsuit argues, a misrepresentation of what the test actually measures.
• The ASTM D5511-18 standard similarly lacks defined thresholds for what constitutes “biodegradable in landfill” labeling. The peer-reviewed literature cited in the complaint states explicitly that no current specifications permit comparison between materials on this basis. Using the standard as a label justification exploits the absence of clear contrary specification rather than demonstrating a positive result.
• Densely populated counties in New York, where the named plaintiffs reside, lack sufficient access to composting facilities. Even if consumers read the asterisks, understood EN13432’s requirements, and wanted to compost properly, many could not. The gray zone here is geographic: the regulatory framework assumes composting infrastructure that does not exist at scale in the markets where this product is sold.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs: Selling a Conscience

The lawsuit documents that No. 7 Beauty’s biodegradable labeling was a calculated strategy to extract a price premium from environmentally conscious consumers, not a genuine environmental commitment.

• A 2025 study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, cited in the complaint, found that consumers are willing to pay a positive price premium for biodegradable plastic packaging compared to conventional plastic packaging. No. 7 Beauty’s unqualified “biodegradable” front-label claim was positioned to capture exactly that premium.
• National Retail Federation surveys cited in the complaint found that half to two-thirds of consumers say they will pay more for sustainable products. The complaint states directly: “Defendant is able to profit directly as a result of its false and misleading representation that the Wipes are biodegradable.” The label was a revenue mechanism.
• By marketing the wipes as biodegradable without valid qualification, No. 7 Beauty positioned its products as superior to competitor wipes that did not make the same claim. Plaintiffs allege they “selected [the wipes] over other products that may have been truthfully marketed,” meaning competitors with honest labeling were undercut by No. 7 Beauty’s misleading edge.
• The complaint alleges violations committed “willfully, wantonly, and with reckless disregard for the truth.” The FTC’s Green Guides have been public since their original publication and have been updated to address exactly this category of greenwashing claim. Ignorance of the standard is not a credible defense for a company operating at this scale.

Legal Minimalism: The Letter but Not the Spirit

No. 7 Beauty appears to have constructed a label architecture designed to appear compliant while producing the misleading impression the FTC’s Green Guides were written to prevent.

• The rule: 16 C.F.R. § 260.8(d) requires companies to “clearly and prominently” qualify degradable claims to avoid deception about a product’s ability to degrade in the environment where it is customarily disposed. The technical compliance: No. 7 Beauty added asterisks to the front-label claim and buried the qualifications in small print on the back. The complaint documents this two-asterisk system. The gap from intent: The rule was designed to ensure consumers actually receive the qualification before making a purchase decision. Asterisks in small print on the back of a package, referencing a technical European composting standard most consumers have never heard of, do not achieve that goal.
• The rule: The same regulation requires qualification of “the rate and extent of degradation” as well as the disposal environment. The gap from intent: No. 7 Beauty’s back-label language “tested to be biodegradable including landfill” does not qualify the rate or extent of degradation in any environment. It asserts the affirmative claim without disclosing that landfill decomposition extends over 20 years or more according to the scientific literature cited in the complaint.
• The structural contradiction: The back label directs consumers to dispose “with household waste” in all capitals, while the only path to actual biodegradation under the EN13432 standard requires industrial composting. The product technically cites a composting standard while operationally routing consumers to landfills. Both instructions come from the same packaging.

Societal Impact Mapping: Who Gets Hurt

Environmental Degradation

The environmental harm at the center of this case is not theoretical. It is the predictable output of directing consumers to landfill disposal while labeling a product biodegradable.

• Wipes that consumers believe will biodegrade are instead accumulating in municipal solid waste landfills in an anaerobic environment designed to prevent decomposition. The complaint cites research noting that decomposition at most landfill sites extends over 20 years or more due to low moisture input and poor moisture distribution.
• Consumers who believed they were making an environmentally responsible choice chose these wipes over alternatives. The complaint alleges plaintiffs “selected [the wipes] over other products that may have been truthfully marketed.” The greenwashing claim actively displaced more honestly labeled products from consumers’ carts, removing market pressure that might otherwise incentivize genuine environmental improvement across the product category.
• The landfill burial mechanism the complaint describes functions as a preservation system, not a decomposition system. Excavations of landfills have uncovered newspapers still legible after 40 years and 25-year-old heads of lettuce in near-pristine condition, according to the source cited in the complaint. These wipes will persist in the same conditions.

Economic Inequality

The consumers most harmed by this scheme are those who invested their money in a genuine environmental preference and received nothing for the premium they paid.

• The named plaintiffs represent everyday retail consumers buying personal care products at Walgreens, ShopRite, local pharmacies, and Amazon. These are not wealthy investors. They are people choosing between products at the shelf and making decisions based on label claims they have every reasonable right to trust.
• Plaintiff Stacy Feldbrandt purchased multiple packages between approximately October 2024 and October 2025, meaning repeated overpayment across a sustained period based on the same false claim. The harm compounds across the class of thousands of buyers the lawsuit represents.
• The complaint documents that consumers paid a price premium specifically attributable to the biodegradable claim. A study cited in the complaint confirms willingness to pay more for biodegradable packaging. That premium was extracted under false pretenses. Consumers received a product worth less than what they bargained for, and they had no way of knowing it without access to peer-reviewed landfill science.
• The lawsuit was filed in federal court as a class action precisely because individual damages are small and dispersed. No individual consumer can practically sue over the price difference on a pack of makeup wipes. The class action mechanism is the only vehicle by which accountability is even possible here, and that mechanism requires years of litigation before any consumer sees a cent.

How the FTC’s Prior Inaction Created the Conditions for This Case

The complaint references a 2014 FTC enforcement action against Down to Earth Designs for nearly identical biodegradable greenwashing. That case settled. The conduct it addressed continued to appear on competitor products a decade later.

• The FTC brought and settled charges against Down to Earth Designs in 2014 over unqualified biodegradable claims on diapers. The settlement resolved the case but the complaint notes its significance as proof that “even the FTC has recognized that biodegradable representations without disclaimers can mislead consumers.” The FTC’s own enforcement record predates No. 7 Beauty’s labeling by years.
• Despite that prior action, and despite the Green Guides being published and available, No. 7 Beauty’s wipes were still on shelves in Walgreens, ShopRite, Walmart, and Amazon with the same unqualified front-label biodegradable claim at least through December 2025, when the last named plaintiff made her purchase.
• The FTC has not brought an enforcement action against No. 7 Beauty based on the publicly available record. Private plaintiffs, funding their own litigation, are doing the enforcement work that the regulatory agency established for this purpose did not do.

This Is the System Working as Intended

The gap between the FTC’s written standard and its enforcement capacity is not a bug in the consumer protection system. For companies willing to exploit it, it is a feature.

• The FTC’s Green Guides have clearly prohibited unqualified biodegradable claims for landfill-disposed products since their publication. The standard is explicit. Yet No. 7 Beauty’s wipes carried the exact type of claim the Guides prohibit, and they remained on shelves at major national retailers for at least a year of documented purchases. Regulatory guidance without enforcement is market permission for deception.
• The asterisk system documented in the complaint is the product of legal advice, not accidental omission. Adding two asterisks pointing to fine print on the back creates a paper trail of “qualification” that can be pointed to in litigation while leaving the consumer-facing message (“biodegradable,” front label, large text) intact and effective. The legal architecture is designed to survive the first round of scrutiny while the sales continue.
• Half to two-thirds of consumers say they will pay more for sustainable products, per the National Retail Federation data cited in the complaint. Companies that make false sustainability claims capture that premium. Companies that invest in actual sustainability absorb the real cost. Undetected greenwashing is a competitive subsidy for dishonesty.
• The class action mechanism is the only enforcement tool available because individual damages are too small to litigate separately and the FTC has not acted. The system routes accountability through private litigation funded by plaintiffs’ attorneys on contingency, takes years to resolve, and produces settlements that rarely reach the scale of the profit generated by the misconduct. That is the outcome the system reliably produces.