L.A. County sues Pepsi and Coca-Cola over plastic pollution

Los Angeles County has filed a lawsuit against the world’s largest beverage companies — Coca-Cola and PepsiCo — claiming that the soda and drink makers lied to the public about the effectiveness of plastic recycling and, as a result, left county residents and ecosystems choking in discarded plastic.

The suit is the latest in a series of high-profile legal actions California officials have taken against petrochemical corporations and plastic manufacturers. In September, state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and a group of environmental organizations sued Exxon Mobil, accusing the company of falsely promoting plastics as universally recyclable when, in reality, the vast majority of these products cannot be reused.

The L.A. County suit alleges — in a vein similar to that of Bonta’s suit against Exxon Mobil — that the global beverage companies misrepresented the environmental impact of their plastic bottles, “despite knowing that plastics cannot be readily disposed of without associated environmental impacts.”

“Coke and Pepsi need to stop the deception and take responsibility for the plastic pollution problems” their products are causing, said L.A. County Board of Supervisors Chair Lindsey Horvath.

Neither company has responded to requests for comment from The Times.

Currently, just 9% of the world’s plastics are recycled. The rest ends up being incinerated, sent to landfills, or discarded on the landscape, where they are often flushed into rivers or out to sea.

At the same time, there is growing concern about the health and environmental consequences of microplastics — the bits of degraded plastic that slough off as the product ages, or is used, or washed. The tiny particles have been detected in every ecosystem on the planet that has been surveyed, as well as nearly every living organism examined — including the brain, heart, lungs, blood and semen of humans.

In a statement, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors said that current methods of recycling are “incapable of eliminating environmental impacts.”

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo own the brands Coke, Pepsi, Dasani, Smartwater, Fanta, Aquafina, Gatorade, 7-Up, Sprite, Vitamin Water, and Mountain Dew, among others. Together, the two companies own roughly 72.8% of the carbonated soft drink market in the U.S. — with Coca-Cola owning 46.3% and Pepsi, 26.5%.

According to the county’s statement, the two companies have consistently ranked as the world’s “top plastic polluters.”

Beverage industry representatives pushed back on that allegation and others, saying they were “simply not true.”

“California has one of the highest bottle recycling rates in the country — 71% in 2023. Our bottles are designed to be recycled and remade and can include up to 100% recycled plastic,” said William Dermody, vice president of media and public affairs for the American Beverage Assn. — the trade organization for the beverage industry.

“America’s beverage companies are proud of our leadership in California, and across the country, and will continue our partnership with the Golden State to get every bottle back,” he said.

However, waste experts say that even with that rate of recycling, almost 3.5 billion bottles are left unaccounted for. Likewise, the industry’s recycling claim does not acknowledge that bottles can be recycled only one or two times before the plastic is so heavily degraded that it must be used as fuel stock, or for some other “downcycled” material, such as carpeting or outdoor patio furniture — which can’t be recycled.

“PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have misled consumers by deceptively promising that recycling can offset any harm associated with single-use plastic bottles,” said the county board in a statement. “In reality, plastic bottles can only be recycled once, if at all, making promises of a ‘circular economy’ impossible.”

Environmentalists and plastic pollution opponents hailed the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday.

“It’s encouraging to see corporate polluters finally being held accountable for exploiting the trust of their customers in order to turn huge profits at the expense of human and planetary health,” said Jennifer Savage of the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation.

Surfrider, Heal the Bay, Sierra Club and San Francisco Baykeeper collectively sued Exxon Mobil in September, in a lawsuit similar to Bonta’s.

“We applaud Los Angeles County for taking this action on plastic pollution,” said Matt Littlejohn of the nonprofit ocean conservation organization Oceana, which was not a plaintiff in the Exxon Mobil lawsuit. “This is a wake-up call. … It’s time for the companies to get serious about reducing single-use plastic and to stop hiding behind false solutions like recycling.”

The beverage maker lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison on behalf of the people of the state of California.

The suit seeks injunctive relief to “stop the companies’ unfair and deceptive business practices, restitution for consumers of the money acquired by means of the companies’ unfair and deceptive business practices, and civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation,” the county board said in a statement.

The penalties could be per customer or per bottle — the case will be prosecuted in civil court by the county counsel’s Affirmative Litigation and Consumer Protection Division.

“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,” Harrison said in a statement. “My office is committed to protecting the public from deceptive business practices and holding these companies accountable for their role in the plastic pollution crisis.”