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Tales From the Front: Packaging Environment a Hotbed of Activity

In the world of environmental pressures on packaging, signs are pointing more strongly in both directions: Industry efforts and messaging are becoming more powerful.

Eric Greenberg
Eric Greenberg

While at the same time, the arguments of anti-plastics and anti-packaging forces seem to be getting more radical.

(Own-horn tooting: We recently noted that this realm would remain active, even as an aggressive California law failed to pass last year. Read more at pwgo.to/5534).

Federal legislation is being floated that would ban some single-use plastics or make changes to nationwide recycling systems, but the bills’ prospects for passage appear low, though some even have the support of industry groups. We’ll revisit them if they gain traction.

Meanwhile, instead of the legislation track, one environmental group has an aggressive new idea: It has sued major companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, Mars, and Danone, on grounds of creating a “public nuisance,” for failure to warn, breach of warranty, and making products with design defects, among other claims, for marketing their products in plastic bottles.

That’s right, the plaintiff organization thinks the companies should be legally liable for selling their products in plastic and thereby causing damage to consumers. The plaintiff, the Earth Island Institute, filed its case in California state court in San Mateo County near San Francisco, and says these companies “created the condition of plastic pollution, which is extraordinarily harmful to humans, animals, and the environment,” because lots of plastic ends up in the ocean and causes harm there and in other waterways.

The defendant companies, they allege, “have known for decades” that “recycling by itself cannot prevent plastic pollution from damaging oceans, waterways, and coasts,” and they “refuse to adopt more sustainable alternatives in order [to] reap higher profits resulting from using virgin plastic.” They say the companies have placed the blame for plastic pollution on “consumers and public entities” via a “campaign of misinformation.”

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