One sign that the public may be catching on to a government scam is a thunderous claim by officials that businesses are at fault.
This is becoming routine in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s finger is permanently pointed at oil and gas companies, which provide the energy that makes transportation and electricity (especially at night) possible. He has already muscled the legislature into mandating new regulations to prevent “excess profits” and control fuel inventories.
Last year, California sued five oil companies over their alleged “deception” about climate change.
This year, California sued ExxonMobil over its allegedly misleading statements about plastics recycling.
Perhaps this inspired L.A. County to file a lawsuit in October accusing Coca-Cola and Pepsi of damaging the earth with plastic bottles that are not recycled as consumers have supposedly been led to believe.
“For years, consumers have purchased products in single-use plastic bottles and packaging believing, based on PepsiCo’s and Coca-Cola’s marketing, that their ‘disposable’ products can be recycled,” the county’s lawsuit asserts. “They have dutifully rinsed and sorted plastic products into designated recycling bins and carted them to curbs or trash rooms believing they are doing their part to make sure that the plastic they buy does not end up as waste. Except at the margins, it is theater — a show designed to make consumers feel good about, and be willing to, consume unprecedented volumes of Defendants’ single-use plastic.”
The county also complains that “plastic pollution” is a threat to “terrestrial ecosystems and marine life” as well as “a significant risk to human health.”
Apparently, plastics recycling doesn’t actually happen on a scale that makes the least bit of difference. There are significant economic and environmental challenges with recycling plastic, and then there’s the problem of China deciding a few years back that recyclables from the U.S. would not be accepted any longer.
Elected officials, however, were already invested in the idea that promoting (or mandating) recycling was a political winner for them. Today you see so many assorted trash bins at the curb every week that residential streets in California look like an aisle at Home Depot.
But elected officials are never going to look in the mirror and see the cause of a problem.
So L.A. County’s 41-page complaint calls out Coca-Cola and Pepsi for “Widespread production and promotion of single-use plastic” that has led to “persistent plastic leakage into the environment.”
A closer look at the complaint reveals that the problem is not plastic itself, but litter. “Single-use plastics continually wash into County waterways and storm and sewer systems,” the lawyers wrote.
This inconvenient fact spelled doom for a similar lawsuit filed in 2023 by New York Attorney General Leticia James. The complaint charged that 17% of the trash in the Buffalo River came from PepisCo products. But New York Supreme Court Justice Emitio Colaiacovo dismissed the case, writing that the beverage company had “no duty” to warn customers that throwing plastic bottles into the street or river causes pollution. It’s “an obvious danger of which the product user is actually aware or should be aware as a result of ordinary observation or as a matter of common sense,” the judge wrote.
Clearly L.A. County is betting that no judge in California would expect or require residents to show common sense. So the county’s lawyers are totaling up the damages they want to collect from the international beverage giants.
Related Articles
How can freedom lovers handle this troubling election?
Susan Shelley: Californians must think about their future
Larry Wilson: Racketeer seeks another shot at the grift
Matt Fleming: With two awful choices, what am I supposed to do?
Supermajority votes are vital to a functioning republic
Their reasoning goes like this: Coke and Pepsi didn’t tell consumers about the “risks” of single-use plastics; this is unfair and therefore illegal under Section 17200 of the California Business and Professions Code; and “Any person who engages, has engaged, or proposes to engage in unfair competition shall be liable for a civil penalty not to exceed $2,500 for each violation, which shall be assessed and recovered in a civil action brought in the name of the people of the State of California.”
Whether “each violation” means one statement, one bottle or one county resident, it will add up fast, giving the county lots of leverage to negotiate a settlement.
This isn’t environmentalism, it’s an over-spending government shaking down lawful businesses.
Feel free to throw out your plastic bottles, and your elected officials, in the nearest trash bin.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley