A new lawsuit from Los Angeles County accuses PepsiCo Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. of deceiving the public about the recyclability of their plastic bottles and the environmental and health harms from the production and disposal of their plastics packaging.
The Oct. 30 lawsuit alleges that the two companies' products are top sources of plastic litter and that they marketed recycling as a "false" solution so consumers would see the bottles as an environmentally responsible choice.
The county's legal action seeks to limit the marketing and advertising language the companies can use around recycling and other environmental claims.
"Coke and Pepsi need to stop the deception and take responsibility for the plastic pollution problems your products are causing," Lindsey Horvath, chair of the Los Angeles County Board, said in a statement. "Los Angeles County will continue to address the serious environmental impacts caused by companies engaging in misleading and unfair business practices."
Responding for Coke and Pepsi, the American Beverage Association disputed the claim that its bottles are not recycled and said they have a a recycling rate over 70 percent in California because of the state's container deposit law.
"The allegation that our packaging is not and will not be recycled is simply not true," said ABA spokesperson William Dermody. "Driven by the California Redemption Value bottle return and investments by America's beverage companies, California has one of the highest bottle recycling rates in the country — 71 percent in 2023."
The ABA, which represents non-alcoholic beverage industry, said that PET bottles have a lower environmental impact than other containers, and it said that using recycled PET to make new bottles reduces energy consumption by 79 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 67 percent.
The detailed 41-page suit echoes claims in a 2022 lawsuit from California Attorney General Rob Bonta that accuses the plastics industry of misleading the public over recycling, as well as a lawsuit last year against PepsiCo from New York Attorney General Letitia James.
A New York state court judge, however, tossed out James's lawsuit Oct. 31, saying that the attorney general was trying to "create a regulatory burden that does not exist" in holding the company responsible for pollution along the Buffalo River.
"It is important to note that regardless of defendant's aspirational goals, Pepsi/Frito Lay did not pollute the Buffalo River or any other local waterways. Other people did," State Supreme Court Judge Emilio Colaiacovo wrote.
"The attorney general's allegations are speculative," he said. "Absent the legislature passing a law or the executive branch issuing an order establishing such a theory of liability or imposing restrictions on what type and amount of plastic can be used, this lawsuit is simply policy idealism."
The Los Angeles lawsuit alleges that plastics packaging from the two companies are top sources of litter that the county spends resources trying to clean up and it makes allegations on a range of plastics pollution themes, including that the companies falsely suggest chemical recycling is a solution to plastics waste and that they've failed to disclose risks from microplastics in their products.
The lawsuit also accuses the companies of making public promises to reduce their use of virgin plastics but then delaying those deadlines.
For example, it says PepsiCo publicly declared in 2019 that it would reduce the total virgin plastics it uses by 35 percent by 2025, but later pushed that deadline back and said it would reduce its virgin plastics by 50 percent by 2030.
"This is just one example of PepsiCo making public declarations for sustainable initiatives and failing to actually implement any methodology to reach those goals," the lawsuit said. "By repeating this endless cycle of making promises and not living up to them, PepsiCo is able to reap significant profits and maintain a public face that it is fighting the pollution crisis. In reality, PepsiCo continually pushes back the projected completion date of its initiatives."
The lawsuit seeks to use California's false advertising and unfair competition laws to limit the claims the two companies can make about environmental impacts of their packaging, as well as paying up to $2,500 for each violation of the laws.
The lawsuit said consumers "care about, and are likely to be deceived by, claims relating to the recyclability of plastic products."
"The goal of this lawsuit is to stop the unfair and illegal conduct, to address the marketing practices that deceive consumers, and to force these businesses to change their practices to reduce the plastic pollution problem in the County and in California," said County Counsel Dawyn Harrison.
The county said Coke and Pepsi downplay the practical and technical difficulties in recycling their plastics packaging, and said that if their plastic bottles are recycled, they are likely downcycled into a product that cannot be recycled again.
"Plastic bottles cannot be recycled into new bottles over and over again, as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola suggest and state in their advertising and corporate statements," the lawsuit said, pointing to advocacy campaigns like the "Made to be Remade" initiative for bottles the companies are part of.
The lawsuit also pointed to Coca-Cola ceasing its financial support for the Plastics Industry Association in 2022, after it said the company received pressure from environmental groups. In 2019, both Coke and Pepsi said they were leaving the plastics association, with Coke telling Plastics News it was over unspecified policy differences.
In its statement on behalf of Coke and Pepsi, however, the ABA pushed back on the recycling claims in the county's lawsuit.
"Our bottles are designed to be recycled and remade and can include up to 100 percent recycled plastic," Dermody said, adding that a PET bottle can be recycled up to 10 times.
The ABA said the beverage industry designs the entire bottle, including the cap, to be recycled, and said that its bottles make up only 1 percent of municipal solid waste in the U.S., while other plastics make up more than 10 times that.
It also pointed to growth in the use of recycled PET in bottles, saying that the amount had had nearly tripled in the industry's bottles in four years.
ABA said the industry's plastic footprint decreased 7.7 percent from 2018 to 2022, as the beverage industry's use of virgin plastic in new bottles fell by 6.1 percent in that time period and its use of recycled PET increased 186 percent.
Coke said in its 2023 environmental update that 17 percent of the PET it used was recycled PET, toward a goal of 50 percent by 2030.
The ABA statement said the industry has committed more than $37 million to more than 60 projects nationwide to boost recycled PET collection by 920 million pounds and recycled aluminum by 75 million pounds over 10 years.