Jackson Heights man invents rat-proof garbage bags

“Trash stays in and rodents stay out,” according to Queens businessperson Joseph (Dee) Dussich, inventor of the Repel-X Bag.
“These bags are made to repel rats and keep them from going through your garbage,” said Dussich, President of JAD Corporation of America, his Jackson Heights firm that wholesales maintenance supplies.
He’s been making garbage bags for 40 years, since he started the company in 1967. The idea for inventing these rodent deterring trash bags all started with a call to Dussich several years ago.
“One of our clients called around communion time and said if I had seen the picture in the paper that morning,” said Dussich. The picture he was referring to was printed in the Daily News and had three little children in white, playing by rat-infested garbage bags.
“He [the superintendent] said to me ‘It’s my building, and your bags,’” and then demanded that Dussich design a garbage bag to kill rats. If a trash bag was fatal enough to kill rodents, that same bag would also be harmful to dogs, small pets, and even harmful to small children.
Dussich said he wouldn’t have that, so it was then that he began the quest to find what rats dislike, but won’t kill them. After much research and lab testing he came to a conclusion.
“We found that rats have extremely sensitive sinuses,” said Dussich, “things that clear out our nasal passages, like eucalyptus and mint, are too overpowering for rodents and irritate their sinuses.”
His company developed a bag that is not only an irritant to rats, but to mice, raccoons, squirrels, roaches and other small rodents, calling it the Repel-X Bag.
“Tests have show that after a period of 5-7 days, rats associate that smell with the bags and stay away from them completely,” he said.
Though the mint-y smells prove to be bothersome to the small creatures, he says this same irritant is quite pleasant to humans and actually helps in masking the putrid smell of garbage.
For all the Repel-X bags have to offer, one would expect them to be costly but Dussich says that the price for his bags is the same as buying regular plastic bags.
Though none are yet available in stores for the public to purchase, JAD is currently working on deals with distributors that might bring the bags to local supermarkets.
“I love Queens and I made these bags for the people of Queens,” said Dussich.