Environmental advocacy group Earth Island Institute (Berkeley, California / USA; www.earthisland.org) has filed a lawsuit against 10 food, beverage and consumer product companies seeking accountability for their contribution to the plastics waste crisis.

The companies include Coca-Cola (Atlanta, Georgia / USA; www.coca-cola.com), PepsiCo (Harrison, New York / USA; www.pepsico.com) and Nestlé (Vevey / Switzerland; www.nestle.com), which together are responsible for 14% of plastics pollution in oceans, according to the lawsuit. The information is based on reports conducted by Break Free From Plastic (www.breakfreefromplastic.org) – see Plasteurope.com of 27.01.2020. The lawsuit also names Clorox (Oakland, California; www.clorox.com), Colgate-Palmolive (New York, New York; www.colgate.com), Crystal Geyser (Calistoga, California; www.crystalgeyser.com), Danone (Paris / France; www.danone.com), Mars (McLean, Virginia / USA; www.mars.com), Mondelez International (Deerfield, Illinois / USA; www.mondelezinternational.com) and Procter & Gamble (P&G, Cincinnati, Ohio / USA; www.us.pg.com).

The filing states that the companies that created the condition of plastics pollution, which is harmful to humans, animals and the environment, have known for decades that recycling alone cannot prevent the damage to oceans, waterways and coasts. It also states that these companies have launched a decades-long campaign of misinformation about the recyclability of their products, putting the cost of pollution on consumers and public entities.

By suing major corporations that made money from the sale of single-use plastics, the Earth Island Institute hopes to recoup some of the costs of cleaning up marine litter. Recently introduced US legislation – see Plasteurope.com of 18.02.2020 – is calling on corporations to take on responsibility for plastics pollution.

The lawsuit alleges public nuisance, breach of warranty, failure to warn and negligence, among other claims against the companies. Sumona Majumdar, general counsel for Earth Island, said the lawsuit seeks to hold “Big Plastic” responsible for their knowing contribution to public harms and simultaneous effort to obscure those harms and deflect blame, similar to actions by “Big Oil”, “Big Tobacco” and “Big Pharma”. According to the court filing, only 9% of the estimated 8.3 bn t of plastics produced globally since 1950 has been recycled. An estimated 150m t of plastics currently pollutes the marine environment, with an additional 8-10m t added each year.