Seagulls flock to the trash boom near the mouth of the Los Angeles River in January 2015 after tons of trash and debris piled up during two days of heavy rain. Photo:Los Angeles Times
FEBRUARY 29th 2020
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other large companies facing pollution lawsuits
Over the course of time, many environmental groups have been campaigning to make corporations take some responsibility for the mass plastic pollution seen across the world as of late – few with any real success. But recently, one group called The Earth Island Institute has taken a step in this direction when they filed a lawsuit against several large, plastic-producing companies.
In a California Court on Wednesday, The Earth Island Institute filed a suit against some of the world’s biggest and most well renowned food, beverage, as well as general consumer goods companies in an attempt to make them take responsibility -at least in some measure- for the growing plastic pollution problem across the world. The Earth Island Institute is a non-profit environmental organisation, that’s been founded in 1982 by David Brower, and is based in California. The Institute’s been involved in all sorts of environmental activism, mainly providing support for groups via fiscal sponsorships and similar methods.
Filed in the San Mateo County Superior Court, the suit is supposedly thought to be the first of its kind, and follows the heavy public unrest over plastic pollution – especially noticeable throughout the years accumulating in the world’s oceans, 8 to 20m tons of plastic entering annually as they claim. The initiative is meant to force several large companies to reclaim ownership of the plastic materials they use to sample and package their products, and to in turn make them clean up the amassing plastic wastes that are, as they say, creating a global crisis.
The group has asked for damages, undetermined as of yet, along with the demand for plastic waste cleaning from the sued companies which involve Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle USA, Procter & Gamble as well as six other companies. They also demand that the companies stop claiming the products are “recyclable” when they are, in fact, hardly recycled in any way at all.
David Phillips, executive director of Earth Island Institute, explained this when he said that “These companies should bear the responsibility for choking our ecosystem with plastic. They know very well that this stuff is not being recycled, even though they are telling people on the labels that it is recyclable and making people feel like it’s being taken care of.”
Josh Floum, Earth Island Institute’s board president also spoke on the matter, saying that “This is the first of what I believe will be a wave of lawsuits seeking to hold the plastics industry accountable for the unprecedented mess in our oceans. These plastics peddlers knew that our nation’s disposal and recycling capabilities would be overrun, and their products would end up polluting our waterways.”
Certain measures that are likely impose so-called extended producer responsibility, were they to be executed, are currently up for review by the California Legislature. Such measures would force large producer companies to find means of recapturing the plastics that are left behind after the products themselves are consumed.
The Plastics Industry Assn., are a trade group representing Pepsi and Coca-Cola on the matter, and have delayed any sort of response to the filed lawsuit up until recently. “Plastic waste is a worldwide problem that demands thoughtful solutions,” the company said, after days of silence. “America’s beverage companies are already taking action to address the issue by reducing our use of new plastic, investing to increase the collection of our bottles so they can be remade into new bottles as intended, and collaborating with legislators and third-party experts to achieve meaningful policy resolutions.”
The claim has referred to the Nestle company as the world’s largest food and beverage company, claiming Pepsi as the second largest after that, along with the claim that 15% of the world’s single-use plastics are all produced by the collective companies with little to no consequence.
In a statement, Earth Island General Counsel Sumona Majumdar said that “The products that we are targeting in our lawsuit are contained in plastic packaging that we often use for just a few minutes. And yet this packaging pollutes our bodies from one generation to the next, and our planet for centuries.”
The group forewarn that they do believe recycling can be a key to decreasing pollution and potentially saving the planet, as long as it is known that the current systems for recycling are inadequate and need to undergo some serious redesigns and considerations.
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
