Los Angeles County announced last week that it was suing PepsiCo and Coca-Cola over plastic pollution, arguing that the soda giants’ plastic bottles had harmed public health and the environment and that the companies had knowingly misleads the public about the recyclability of their products.

“Coke and Pepsi must end this deception and take responsibility for the plastic pollution problems caused by your products,” Los Angeles County Board Chairwoman Lindsey P. Horvath said in a statement. statement. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s “deceptive marketing practices” – their sustainability claims – as well as civil penalties and compensation for consumers who were misled by those claims.

THE 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 waste — for example, by sweeping streets and installing large trash booms at the mouths of the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek — it simply can’t keep up with the scale of the problem. .

Single-use plastics “are continually dumped into County waterways, storm systems, and sewers,” the suit states. Once in the environment, plastic waste can break down into microplastics and leaching endocrine disrupting chemicals such as BPA and phthalates.

Next, the complaint describes Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s outsized contribution to these problems, using an analysis from an annual report “brand audit» led by the non-profit association Break Free From Plastic. Last year’s audit found that beverage makers were the world’s two biggest plastic polluters, as determined by volunteers’ collections of branded plastic at global beach cleanups, which revealed more of their products than any other company. These results are “consistent with pollution 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 namesake soft drink lines, the two companies collectively own numerous beverage brands, including Dasani, Fresca and PowerAde (Coca-Cola products), as well as Aquafina, Gatorade and Mountain Dew (PepsiCo products), all sold in single-use plastic bottles.

“I have a lot of fear and anger toward the plastic that I am forced to interact with every day,” Emily Parker, a Los Angeles County resident and coastal and marine scientist at the organization, told nonprofit Heal the Bay, which was not involved in the project. 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 about the problems their plastic bottles would cause – and that they deliberately misled the public about them, including by promoting the recycling of plastic, but also generally stating that building a “a stronger, more sustainable future for us all.” Los Angeles County describes this as cynical efforts to placate concerned members of the public and describes a pattern of missing or making no progress on quantitative goals for reducing plastics use.

According to Los Angeles County, Coke and Pepsi have promoted plastic recycling as a central solution to the plastic crisis, misleadingly stating or implying that their bottles are or one day will be infinitely recyclable. But due to material constraints, plastic bottles cannot be repeatedly transformed into new bottles; Most recycled plastics are “downcycled,” meaning they are converted into lower-quality plastic products, like Adirondack chairs, that cannot themselves be recycled. Scientists have estimated that, of all the plastic produced between 1950 and 2015, only 0.9 percent has been recycled more than once.

The complaint demands that the companies pay compensation “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.

In response to a request for comment, Pepsi and Coke referred Grist to William Dermody, vice president of media and public affairs for the American Beverage Association, an industry group. Dermody said it was “simply wrong” that plastic bottles were not recycled; in California, he cited a statistic that 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 contain up to 100% recycled plastics.”

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

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Eric Buescher, senior attorney for the nonprofit San Francisco Baykeeper, said lawsuits like Los Angeles County’s could “snowball” if they prove successful. “If they win and get a good result, there will be a lot of counterfeit litigation,” he said.

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

Buescher said that seemed like a “hostile” way to approach the issue. “In general, people are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their conduct and those who mislead others about them,” he said. “And reducing the amount of plastic made into single-use products certainly seems like a 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” represented by their litter, and a brought by the Sierra Club in 2021 against Coca-Cola and other beverage manufacturers for labeling their bottles as “100% recyclable.” Buescher’s own organization, alongside Heal the Bay, Surfrider and the 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.

Parker, of Heal the Bay, said all the lawsuits share the same overarching goal: stopping companies from producing so much plastic. “I’ve been involved in working on plastic pollution for a long time, and what we’ve learned is that cleaning up is never enough,” she said. “We need to hold all types of plastic producers accountable for the mess they have caused to our environment and the damage to our bodies.”