Los Angeles County announced last week that it was suing PepsiCo and Coca-Cola over plastic pollution, arguing that the soda giants’ plastic bottles harmed public health and the environment and that the companies knowingly misled the public about their products’ recyclability.
“Coke and Pepsi need to stop the deception and take responsibility for the plastic pollution problems your products are causing,” said Lindsey P. Horvath, chairman of the Los Angeles County Board. statement. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s “deceptive business practices” — their sustainability claims — plus civil penalties and restitution for consumers misled by those claims.
The 41 page complaint begins with an overview of the plastic pollution crisis and how single-use plastics affect California and LA County specifically. Although LA County is investing millions of dollars to collect and manage plastic debris—for example, through street sweeps and large dumpsters at the mouths of the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek—it simply cannot keep up with the scale of the problem. .
Single-use plastics “continually wash into waterways and storm and sewer systems,” the suit says. Once in the environment, plastic waste can break down microplastics and leaching endocrine disrupting chemicals such as BPA and phthalates.
Then the complaint describes Coke and Pepsi’s major contribution to these problems, using an analysis of an annual “brand audit” performed by the non-profit organization Break Free From Plastic. Last year, the audit found the drinks makers to be the world’s top two plastic polluters, as determined by the collections of their branded plastic by volunteers at global beach clean-ups, which turned up more of their products than any other company’s. These results are “consistent with the pollution rates in Los Angeles County,” according to the complaint.
Pepsi and Coke are some of the biggest companies in the world; Pepsi’s market cap is about $228 billion, and Coke’s is $282 billion. In addition to their eponymous lines of soft drinks, the two companies jointly 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 have a lot of fear and anger with the plastic that I’m forced to interact with every day,” said Emily Parker, an LA County resident and a coastal and marine scientist with the nonprofit Heal the Bay, who is not involved was with the complaint. “It is not possible to live and function without coming into contact with plastic.”
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However, at the heart of the matter 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 it, particularly by promoting plastic recycling, but also by making general claims about building of a “stronger, more sustainable future for us all.” LA County paints these as cynical attempts to appease concerned members of the public, and describes a pattern of missing or failing to make progress on quantitative targets for reducing plastic use.
According to LA County, Coke and Pepsi have framed plastic recycling as a central solution to the plastic crisis, misleadingly stating or implying that their bottles are or will one day be endlessly recyclable. But due to material limitations, plastic bottles cannot be repeatedly turned into new bottles; most plastic recycling is “downcycling,” meaning it is turned into lower-quality plastic products like Adirondack chairs that cannot be recycled themselves. Scientists have estimated that of all the plastics produced between 1950 and 2015, only 0.9 percent has been recycled more than once.
The complaint calls for the companies to pay restitution “to all victims of their unfair and deceptive business practices,” and to 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 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 not true” that plastic bottles are not recycled; in California, he cited a statistical saying that polyethylene terephthalate bottles such as Coke’s and Pepsi’s 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 plastic.”
LA County’s 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 Coke obtained was recycled; that number was 6 percent for Pepsi.
Eric Buescher, a senior attorney for the nonprofit San Francisco Baykeeper, said lawsuits like LA County’s could “snowball” if they prove effective. “If they win and get a good 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 was against PepsiCo fired last week on the grounds that it should be up to the legislature or executive to tackle plastic pollution and misinformation. The judge said that while he could think of “no reasonable person who does not believe in the imperatives of recycling and being better stewards of our environment, this does not give rise to specious claims of liability that do nothing to address the problem not too loose. .”
Buescher said it seemed like a “hostile” way to approach the issue. “In general, people are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their behavior and for deceiving others about them,” he said. “And reducing the amount of plastic produced in single-use products certainly seems to be 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 over the “public nuisance” represented by their litter, and one brought by the Sierra Club in 2021 against Coca-Cola and other beverage manufacturers for labeling their bottles as “100 percent recyclable.” Buescher’s own organization, along with 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 over false advertising and environmental pollution.
Parker, along with Heal the Bay, said all the lawsuits share the same overarching goal: to stop companies from producing so much plastic. “I’ve been involved in plastic pollution work for a long time, and the thing we’ve learned is that cleanup is never enough,” she said. “We must hold all types of plastic producers responsible for the mess they have made of our environment and for the damage they are doing to our bodies.”
