Los Angeles County announced last week that it will sue PepsiCo and Coca-Cola for plastic pollution, arguing that the soda giants’ plastic bottles have harmed public health and the environment and that the companies knowingly misled the public. on the recyclability of their products.

“Coke and Pepsi must stop the deception and take responsibility for the plastic pollution problems their products are causing,” said Los Angeles County Board President Lindsey P. Horvath in a statement. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s “deceptive business practices” (their sustainability claims) as well as civil penalties and restitution for consumers who were misled by those claims.

He 41 page complaint begins with an overview of the plastic pollution crisis and how single-use plastics specifically affect California and Los Angeles County. Although Los Angeles County is investing millions of dollars to collect and manage plastic trash (for example, through street sweeps and large trash booms at the mouths of the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek), it simply cannot keep pace. the magnitude of the problem. .

Single-use plastics “continually find their way into the county’s waterways and sewer and storm systems,” the lawsuit says. Once in the environment, plastic trash can decompose into microplastics and leach chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system such as BPA and phthalates.

The complaint then describes Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s enormous contribution to these problems, using an analysis of an annual report.”brand audit” made by the nonprofit organization Break Free From Plastic. Last year, the audit found that beverage makers were the world’s top two plastic polluters, as determined by branded plastic collections by volunteers in global beach cleanups, who found more of their products than theirs. from any other company. These results are “consistent with contamination rates in Los Angeles County,” according to the complaint.

Pepsi and Coca-Cola are among the largest companies in the world; Pepsi’s market capitalization is approximately $228 billion and Coca-Cola’s is $282 billion. In addition to their eponymous soft drink lines, the two companies collectively own numerous beverage brands, including Dasani, Fresca and PowerAde (Coca-Cola products), and Aquafina, Gatorade and Mountain Dew (PepsiCo products), all of which are sold in single-use plastic bottles.

“I am very afraid and angry about the plastic that I am forced to interact with every day,” said Emily Parker, a Los Angeles County resident and coastal and marine scientist at the nonprofit Heal the Bay, which does not participated in the complaint. “It is not possible to live and function without coming into contact with plastic.”

The crux of the lawsuit, however, is the claim that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo knew of the problems their plastic bottles would cause and that they deliberately misled the public about them, particularly by promoting plastic recycling, but also through general statements about building a “A stronger and more sustainable future for all of us..” Los Angeles County describes them as cynical efforts to appease a concerned public and describes a pattern of failure or failure to achieve quantitative goals to reduce plastic use.

According to Los Angeles County, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have posited plastic recycling as a central solution to the plastic crisis, misleadingly claiming or implying that their bottles are or one day will be infinitely recyclable. But due to material limitations, plastic bottles cannot be made into new bottles repeatedly; Most plastic recycling is “downcycling,” meaning it is converted into lower-quality plastic products, such as Adirondack chairs, that themselves cannot be recycled. Scientists have estimated that of all the plastic produced between 1950 and 2015, only 0.9 percent It was recycled more than once.

The lawsuit asks that the companies pay restitution “to all victims of their unfair and deceptive business practices” and pay civil penalties of up to $2,500 for each violation of California’s false advertising and unfair competition laws.

In response to a request for comment, Pepsi and Coca-Cola referred Grist to William Dermody, vice president of media and public affairs at the American Beverage Association, an industry group. Dermody said it is “simply not true” that plastic bottles are not recycled; in California, cited a statistic that says polyethylene terephthalate bottles like Coca-Cola and Pepsi are recycled at a rate of 70 percent. He said the companies’ bottles are “designed to be recycled and remade and can include up to 100 percent recycled plastics.”

The Los Angeles County complaint says Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s ads obscure the fact that the vast majority of the plastic they use is virgin, not recycled. In 2022, only 13.6 percent of the plastic obtained by Coca-Cola was recycled; that figure was 6 percent for Pepsi.

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Eric Buescher, senior attorney for the nonprofit San Francisco Baykeeper, said lawsuits like the one from Los Angeles County could snowball if they prove effective. “If they win and get a big result, there will be a lot of copycat litigation,” he said.

That said, a similar lawsuit filed last year by New York Attorney General Letitia James against PepsiCo was fired last week arguing that it should be up to the legislative or executive branch to address plastic pollution and misinformation. The judge said that while he could not think of “any reasonable person who does not believe in the imperatives to recycle and be better stewards of our environment, this does not give rise to phantom claims of responsibility that do nothing to solve the problem that exists.” .”

Buescher said this seemed like a “hostile” way to approach the issue. “In general, people are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their behavior and for misleading others about them,” he said. “And reducing the amount of plastic made into single-use products would certainly seem to be one way to at least partially solve the problem.”

It remains to be seen whether other judges will agree with Buescher. Several lawsuits are still pending, including one brought by the city of Baltimore in June against Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Frito Lay for the “public nuisance” that their trash represents, and one brought to you by the Sierra Club in 2021 against Coca-Cola and other beverage makers for labeling their bottles as “100 percent recyclable.” Buescher’s own organization, along with Heal the Bay, Surfrider and Sierra Club, recently filed a complaint against a company further up the supply chain: Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest producer of polymers used to make plastics. California Attorney General Rob Bonta also sued Exxon Mobil for false advertising and environmental pollution.

Heal the Bay’s Parker said all of the lawsuits share the same general goal: stop companies from producing so much plastic. “I’ve been involved in work on plastic pollution for a long time and what we’ve learned is that cleanup is never enough,” she said. “We have to hold all types of plastic producers accountable for the disaster they have caused in our environment and for the damage they are causing to our bodies.”