The New York prosecutor’s office announced this Wednesday a lawsuit, which it described as historic, against the beverage company PepsiCo for contaminating the environment and compromising public health with its single-use plastic bottles, caps and wrappers. In a lawsuit filed in Erie County court, Attorney General Letitia James accuses PepsiCo of contributing to public nuisance by generating a significant portion of the plastic waste found in and around the Buffalo River, approximately 17% of the detritus that can be attributed to specific brands among all the garbage.
The presence of remains of the multinational company’s products along the Buffalo River, in the north of the State, has pushed Democrat James—responsible for the accusation of fraud against Donald Trump—to sign one of the first lawsuits from a state in the country against a large plastics producer. The fact that the packaging does not warn, as tobacco packs do, for example, of the risks to health and the environment has especially weighed on the decision. That is why the lawsuit also accuses the company of failing to warn consumers of the harmful effects of its elimination.
“No company is too big to [evitar] guarantee that their products do not harm our environment and our public health. “All New Yorkers have a basic right to clean water, but PepsiCo’s irresponsible packaging and marketing endangers Buffalo’s water supply, environment and public health,” said James. “No one should have to worry about plastics in their drinking water, plastic trash littering their scenic riverbank, or plastic pollution harming wildlife. “I will never hesitate to stand up to big companies that endanger the health and safety of New Yorkers and our planet.”
85 beverage brands and 25 snack brands
PepsiCo, which is headquartered in New York State, manufactures, produces and packages at least 85 different beverage brands and 25 snack brands that predominantly come in single-use plastic packaging. Plastic has become a persistent and dangerous form of pollution in the Buffalo River watershed over the past decade. Last year, the prosecutor’s statement explains, James’ office conducted a study of all types of waste collected at 13 points along the river and its tributaries and discovered that PepsiCo’s single-use plastic containers were the most numerous. Of the 1,916 pieces of plastic trash collected from an identifiable brand, more than 17% had been produced by PepsiCo. “PepsiCo’s plastic containers far exceeded any other source of this identifiable plastic waste along the river, and were three times more abundant than the next largest pollutant.”
From 2013 to 2022, approximately 78% of waste collected by Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper volunteers in the river basin was plastic. Significant quantities of single-use plastic food and beverage packaging were found each year, including food wrappers, plastic bottles and bottle caps of the types marketed by PepsiCo. Once in the environment, these packaging begin to decompose quickly and release dangerous microplastics.
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A study by the NGO Break Free From Plastic inventoried 2,125,415 items of plastic waste from 2,373 garbage collections between 2018 and 2022 throughout the United States. In each of the years under investigation, the report documented that PepsiCo was the first or second producer of trademarked (identifiable) plastic garbage in the entire country. The company has not yet commented on the complaint.
According to the text of the lawsuit, plastic pollution can cause health disorders such as precocious puberty in girls, reduced sperm count, impaired functions of the reproductive organs, obesity, altered sex-specific behaviors, and increased of the rates of some types of cancer. The effects of plastic additives have been observed in mammals, and researchers hope the same effects will be seen in humans, the lawsuit stresses.
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