Philadelphia Sues SC Johnson (Ziploc) And Bimbo Bakeries For Their Lies About Recycling Plastic Bags And Film

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On Wednesday, the city of Philadelphia sued two major companies that use the How2Recycle label and other recycling symbols on their plastic bags: SC Johnson, which owns Ziploc, and Bimbo Bakeries USA, the country’s largest commercial baking company and the owner of brands such as Oroweat and Sara Lee. According to the 47-page complaint, SC Johnson and Bimbo have engaged in a “coordinated campaign of deception” to convince consumers that their plastic bags are recyclable.

The companies’ practices “violate the law, deceive consumers, and contribute to environmental pollution and the disruption of recycling operations, costing the city thousands of dollars every year in remediation,” Philadelphia’s city solicitor, Renee Garcia, said in a statement. The complaint is part of a recent surge in state-, city-, and county-level litigation related to plastics recycling claims. Right now there are pending lawsuits from Baltimore; California; Connecticut; L.A. County; and New York state. A lawsuit from Minnesota against Walmart and the manufacturer of Hefty trash bags was settled last year.

But Philadelphia’s suit is the first to name-check How2Recycle, whose labels often instruct consumers to deposit used plastic bags at “store drop-off” locations, like at Walmart and Target stores. According to the complaint, most or all Ziploc and Bimbo products sold in Philadelphia featured these labels as of 2024, sometimes in addition to other recycling indicators and instructions. The city says these labels mislead consumers into thinking they can buy plastic bags without creating waste, as long as they try to recycle them. This allegedly contravenes a consumer protection ordinance that Philadelphia enacted in 2024, which empowers the city to investigate deceptive business practices without waiting for the Pennsylvania attorney general or district attorney to do so.

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The complaint cites a 2023 investigation in which ABC News used tracking devices to follow bundles of plastic deposited in store drop-off bins across the U.S. The investigation found that only 4 of 46 trackers ended up at U.S. facilities that recycle plastic bags. Most of the rest went to landfills, incinerators, or transfer stations that don’t recycle plastic bags or send them to facilities that do. One of the trackers was dropped off at a Target location in Philadelphia. It went to a waste-management transfer station and was likely mixed with other trash to be burned or landfilled. Plastic in landfills breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces that leach chemicals and contaminate the environment. Other investigations from Bloomberg Green, Environment America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and The Last Beach Cleanup have shown similar results. In 2023, the CEO of a company that had compiled a directory of plastic film drop-off locations abruptly took it offline, citing a lack of “real commitment” from the plastics industry. “There’s more of an illusion of stuff getting recycled than there actually is,” she told ABC News. “I just couldn’t be a part of it anymore.” (Ziploc packaging continued to direct people to this “effectively abandoned domain,” according to the Philadelphia complaint.)

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https://grist.org/accountability/philadelphia-sues-ziploc-sc-johnson-bimbo-bakeries-recycling-symbol-how2recycle/