Mechelen garbage bags from supermarket turn out to be fake: “I had myself bagged” (Mechelen)

Mechelen municipal councilor Thijs Verbeurgt (Vooruit) was surprised when the garbage bags he recently offered turned out to be counterfeit. However, he had bought the roll in good faith in a supermarket. The city and police say they are intensively monitoring false sales.

“I always buy my garbage bags in the same supermarket in the center,” says Verbeurgt. Yet the last two bags of his roll recently remained on the sidewalk. Ivarem’s collectors had not taken them. “There was a sticker on them that said they were counterfeit. Of course I was surprised.”

Inquiries with the waste intermunicipal company taught him that his garbage bags were in fact counterfeit. “When I asked how I could see this as a consumer, I was referred to the city,” says Thijs Verbeurgt. At the city they gave the opposition leader some tips on how to check whether your pockets are the official ones. “You can barely distinguish the fake from the real. So I allowed myself to be fooled and as a consumer you are the victim of this.”

Verbeurgt asks the city to better sensitize residents, to combat fake sellers and to provide more official sales points in the city itself. “Even if we share appearance differences between trash bags, consumers are still unable to determine in-store whether a roll is official or counterfeit. We can only identify individual garbage bags,” responds Abdrahman Labsir (For Mechelen), councilor for Prevention.

Sufficient proof required

The city council cites another argument for not sharing the differences. “You would not only inform the consumer, but also the makers of counterfeit garbage bags,” says Labsir. He also indicates that the city and police are already organizing intensive checks on sales. “Leads about the sale of counterfeit bags are always investigated. When there is sufficient evidence, an inspection is carried out,” the councilor for Prevention explains. The police cannot simply check all points of sale. There are currently 33 official sales points in the Dijle city.

“We are also looking at whether we can take a more decisive approach together with Ivarem and the police in the future,” says Abdrahman Labsir. According to Mayor Bart Somers (For Mechelen), another question arises for the future. “Shouldn’t we switch to a different waste collection system? Working with containers instead of bags. That will be part of the debate before the municipal elections,” he says.