L.A. County Sues Pepsi and Coca-Cola Over Their Role in the Plastic Pollution Crisis (yahoo.com) 96
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles County has filed suit against the world's largest beverage companies — Coca-Cola and Pepsi — claiming the soda and drink makers lied to the public about the effectiveness of plastic recycling and, as a result, left county residents and ecosystems choking in discarded plastic... The Los Angeles County suit alleges — in a vein similar to that of [California attorney general] Bonta's suit against Exxon Mobil — that the global beverage companies misrepresented the environmental impact of their plastic bottles, "despite knowing that plastics cannot be readily disposed of without associated environmental impacts."
"Coke and Pepsi need to stop the deception and take responsibility for the plastic pollution problems" their products are causing, said Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Lindsey P. Horvath... Currently, just 9% of the world's plastics are recycled. The rest ends up being incinerated, sent to landfills, or discarded on the landscape, where they are often flushed into rivers or out to sea. At the same time, there is growing concern about the health and environmental consequences of microplastics — the bits of degraded plastic that slough off as the product ages, or is used, or washed. The tiny particles have been detected in every ecosystem on the planet that has been surveyed, as well as nearly every living organism examined... According to the county's statement, the two companies have consistently ranked as the world's "top plastic polluters...."
The beverage maker lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison on behalf of the people of the state of California... "The goal of this lawsuit is to stop the unfair and illegal conduct, to address the marketing practices that deceive consumers, and to force these businesses to change their practices to reduce the plastic pollution problem in the County and in California," Harrison said in a statement. "My office is committed to protecting the public from deceptive business practices and holding these companies accountable for their role in the plastic pollution crisis."
"Coke and Pepsi need to stop the deception and take responsibility for the plastic pollution problems" their products are causing, said Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Lindsey P. Horvath... Currently, just 9% of the world's plastics are recycled. The rest ends up being incinerated, sent to landfills, or discarded on the landscape, where they are often flushed into rivers or out to sea. At the same time, there is growing concern about the health and environmental consequences of microplastics — the bits of degraded plastic that slough off as the product ages, or is used, or washed. The tiny particles have been detected in every ecosystem on the planet that has been surveyed, as well as nearly every living organism examined... According to the county's statement, the two companies have consistently ranked as the world's "top plastic polluters...."
The beverage maker lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison on behalf of the people of the state of California... "The goal of this lawsuit is to stop the unfair and illegal conduct, to address the marketing practices that deceive consumers, and to force these businesses to change their practices to reduce the plastic pollution problem in the County and in California," Harrison said in a statement. "My office is committed to protecting the public from deceptive business practices and holding these companies accountable for their role in the plastic pollution crisis."
Copy of the complaint (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
L.A. County and California in general just needs to fuck off.
Re: (Score:2)
people that drink shit drinks need to fuck off too... or at least learn how to choose better packaging and proper disposal for those. someone else problem after you drink it is not really someone else problem is everybody problem
Wish then luck (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish LA Luck in the suite. I still believe plastic bottles with Coke is a health risk to people. I remember when they started replacing glass, my friends were young and tried to avoid plastic, but that became impossible.
Also I remember some commercials stating plastic was easier to recycle. Plus around this time bottle deposits ended, putting the recycle burden on the general population instead of the company, causing massive pollution.
Now the "new" bottle deposit is so low that hardly anyone will return their used bottles. Never mind sometimes when you try to return, you get "we do not sell that here" and you fight with the large food chain. Time these bottle deposits be fixed to make people want to return the bottles and force stores to take all bottles. And make the returns nation wide instead of by State.
Re: (Score:2)
I find the taste different from a plastic bottle. Glass is better, with the cans being a middle ground.
Go back to glass bottles, and instead of melting and recycling them - clean them thoroughly and refill like they used to.
Did LA County accept... (Score:1, Insightful)
...tax revenue from these sales? Are they still doing it? If so they have no moral ground to stand on with this hypocrisy. To demand largesse and denounce it at the same time is beyond logic.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Wish then luck (Score:5, Insightful)
clean them thoroughly and refill like they used to
This is actually more costly both from monetary and environmental standpoint. Those poisons needed to "clean them thoroughly" are not your standard dishwasher detergent.
Aluminium cans FTW.
Re: (Score:1)
That's not the main problem. Unless you've kept a photograph of the freshly cleaned and sterilised bottles, which would have been prohibitively expensive in the early 1980's, you will be sued by, and lose to, every criminal who put a piece of broken glass into his Coke bottle. This is ignoring those idiots who would add dirt or bugs to their Coke bottles, not knowing that dirt and bugs would have absorbed trace amounts of the clenaing solutions, allowing the bottlers to prove that they were added post pro
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Aluminium cans FTW.
Aluminum cans are lined with plastic or epoxy which is never, ever recycled.
Reusable containers FTW.
my dick riding mod troll is here (Score:1)
Oh look, three undeserved downmods in a row, what a lazy cuck you are.
Re:Wish then luck (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
In the states, this is how soda bottles used to be until around the mid-1980s -- deposit return bottles to supermarkets and retailers.
Retailers didn't like it because they don't want to deal with it. Those bottles come in dirty and sticky. They're heavy and hard to deal with.
I still prefer those deposit return glass bottles and think we need to go back to them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
this!!
It is much simpler to not recycle, but IMHO, this is one of the things that governments must force business to do. Waste also have a cost, so it is much better that those costs fall in to the business that create those waste. That way they will have the incentive also to not waste resources with useless packaging, easy to remove labels, not use plastic labels in to aluminum cans, etc
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Wish then luck (Score:4, Interesting)
This is actually more costly both from monetary and environmental standpoint.
It is not, and this is actually something done in quite a few countries around the world. Those "poisons" (everything is a poison given the concentration) are no different than the sterilizing agents already used for prepping glasses in beer production for example.
Re: (Score:2)
Last time I checked some of the aluminium cans were lined with plastic, but not all of them. I'd vote for all-aluminium cans.
Re: (Score:2)
depends of what you do and what i did contained...if proper disposal, pickup and transport is used, it is not that a big deal...
pay 20 for every bottle returned to the shops in good state, package that in reusing the incoming packages that had the new bottled, send that to the recycling station, inspect (automatic and manual if needed), wash, last inspection, package for refill, just like new bottles ...but you always simply wash them and throw them to be remelted and recycled, still much cheaper than trans
Re: Wish then luck (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Nope, only the 6oz glass bottles from Mexico is made with cane sugar the 8oz bottles made in the USA or other countries are using HFCS
Re: Wish then luck (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The reason for HFCS is because there was a sugar tax.
This was every companies way around the sugar tax.
Not saying for or against the sugar tax. Just what caused the use of HFCS.
I agree go back to sugar. Better taste, better for your health.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Go back to glass bottles
Plastic bottles don't break into glass allowing your kids to cut themselves. I remember reading an article a number of years ago about how Coke was trying to get a high percentage of the plastic into their bottles. They failed miserably because there wasn't enough plastic available to do it. If you're interested, google the article as I am not your research assistant.
Glass? Or plastic? [Re:Wish then luck] (Score:3)
Go back to glass bottles, and instead of melting and recycling them - clean them thoroughly and refill like they used to.
I like this in principle, but in the real world, glass bottles are an order of magnitude heavier than plastic bottles, and hence you lose in transportation what you gain in recycling.
I'll also note that glass takes more energy to make (about 1500C melting temperature), so unless you do recycle it multiple times, plastic has an advantage. And glass is breakable.
But plastic also has problems. It's not an obvious answer which is better.
https://earth.org/glass-bottle... [earth.org]
https://www.bbc.com/futur [bbc.com]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I like this in principle, but in the real world, glass bottles are an order of magnitude heavier than plastic bottles, and hence you lose in transportation what you gain in recycling.
Not so much. The trucks that deliver the soda go home empty and especially in the case of Coca-Cola they are often owned by the bottler. They could transport empty glass bottles back to the bottling plant instead and the cost of transporting the bottles would be small.
I'll also note that glass takes more energy to make (about 1500C melting temperature), so unless you do recycle it multiple times, plastic has an advantage. And glass is breakable.
The more times you recycle the bottles, the bigger the advantage is for plastic, because it takes a lot less energy to recycle PET beverage containers into PET beverage containers than it does to recycle glass into glass, which takes almost as
Re: Glass? Or plastic? [Re:Wish then luck] (Score:2)
It will take another fraction of a trip per trip, not many more trips. The plastic bottles are not that much smaller.
Re: (Score:2)
in EU, it is target that every country must recycle 70% of the glass until 2025 and 75% until 2030. Most countries are above 70% already, with several above 90%. some are more on the bottom... and those are the target for that EU legislation
https://feve.org/wp-content/up... [feve.org]
The idea is really that a glass can be reused multiple time and later on recycled in a never ending cycle
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
>
Now the "new" bottle deposit is so low that hardly anyone will return their used bottles. Never mind sometimes when you try to return, you get "we do not sell that here" and you fight with the large food chain. Time these bottle deposits be fixed to make people want to return the bottles and force stores to take all bottles. And make the returns nation wide instead of by State.
Interestingly, companies initially fought deposit rules until the realized the collected x in deposits but only payed back part of what they collected. Years ago, I lived in a state with no deposit next to one with one. Since I was on teh border, it was easy to cut your costs by the deposit costs with a quick trip.
Re:Wish then luck (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember some commercials stating plastic was easier to recycle.
The kind of plastic they use for coca-cola bottles is easy to recycle. In fact that's the kind of plastic most commonly recycled back into the same kind of containers that were made from it before. Crystal Geyser owns their own PET recycling plant and you can visible see they are using post-consumer waste because the recycled product has a little darkness to it which is visible in the thick parts of the bottles. Interestingly, Coca-Cola is also using post-consumer PET in their bottles and you can see the same thing with their products.
Now the "new" bottle deposit is so low that hardly anyone will return their used bottles.
Yes, that's a big fail.
Never mind sometimes when you try to return, you get "we do not sell that here" and you fight with the large food chain.
Yes, every outlet which sells anything in recyclable packaging should be required by law to take it back and put it into a recycling stream. Don't want to have to contribute to the solution, don't contribute to the problem.
Re:Low deposit refund blame (Score:1)
Re: [bottle deposit refund is currently too low] Yes, that's a big fail.
But is that the soda companies' fault? Legislators have to adjust the refund amount for inflation, companies can't do that.
Re: (Score:2)
But is that the soda companies' fault?
But did I say it was?
Re:Wish then luck (Score:4, Interesting)
Honeslty I hope the judge tells them to f**K right off.
LA would be suing them over climate change for carbon emitted shipping all that heavy glassware around had they not switched, or injuries to small animals due to broken glass or some other stupid reason.
This is a cash grab.
Plastic bottles did not become the norm because of anything nefarious, they became the norm because the vast majority of consumers WANTED THEM. Beer, Wine, and liquor are largely sold in glass even now; because for the most part consumers seem to want it that way. Attempts to move away from glass bottles and/or aluminum cans generally failed in the market place. Despite all the anti-plastic sentiments, even that is starting to change with respect to single serve containers and lower shelf entries especially.
If LA county wants to sue someone they should their residents who bought and irresponsibly disposed so many of those plastic containers and continue to do so each and every day. That would be appalling too but slightly less unjust. The FDA approves plastic for food containers! They EPA has decades to act, long before Chevron was repealed and did nothing. If you want to start holding people responsible for historic harms related to plastic pollution the standard should have to be some much higher than mere negligence.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you don't understand the issue. People "wanted" plastic bottles because they were lied to about the effectiveness of plastic recycling.
Re:Wish then luck (Score:5, Insightful)
No they wanted plastic bottles because they were lighter and easier to carry around. They could capped and left to roll around in your car half empty or returned to your backpack, etc. You can give them to children without fear of them being broken and causing injuries. They always wanted to cheaper, and to not have to bother returning empty bottles etc.
Plastic offered them all that and more!
Re: (Score:2)
People still have to weigh the ethical consequences in their minds when choosing between options. The white-coated lies from the plastics industry allowed consumers to much more easily disregard the consequences of their purchases.
This same principle is why some, but not all, meat-eaters turn vegetarian or vegan. The consequences of their actions cause them to alter their decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Where you used to have a local brewery or local bottling plant in every city like Cleveland, Pittsburg, Detroit etc., now they have one or two east-coast bottling plants and they use the interstate highway system (which to a first approximation they don't pay for) to truck the product everywhere.
The environmental and social cost of that consolidation, road-building and maintenance,
Re: (Score:2)
nope. They didn't. Until coke and pepsi commercials stating how lighter, safer, etc they were.
The companies pushed that fallacy on to the public.
Now even your testicles have plastic in them.
All plastics leaches into the products.
PS now we also can't use black plastic cooking utensils because other countries are using TV / PC recycling to make them and we import them and buy them. Leaching all sorts of poison into your food.
Welcome to the USA where cash is king and F everyone else over profit.
Local Problem? Local Solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Local problems require local solutions.
Sounds like LA county needs to fix their own damn garbage problem by taxing the solution locally. 300% tax on all soft drinks in plastic bottles should be a good start.
Otherwise, LA county might find out how a couple of global mega-corps have NO problem with stopping all product from flowing into a single county. Probably cheaper than the legal battle. Let the sugar junkies in LA county squirm until voting day.
Re: (Score:2)
Honeslty I hope the judge tells them to f**K right off.
That's what happened in New York [nypost.com] when Letitia James played the same cards.
the judge ruled it would run “contrary to every norm of established jurisprudence” to punish PepsiCo, because it was people, not the company, who ignored laws prohibiting littering.
Re: (Score:2)
Plastic bottles did not become the norm because of anything nefarious, they became the norm because the vast majority of consumers WANTED THEM.
Your point is valid, but in general, "people wanted it" isn't enough to get out of a lawsuit (imagine poisoned milk or something).
In this case, LA is alleging consumers wouldn't have bought the plastic bottles if Coke/Pepsi hadn't misled them into thinking they were recyclable. That seems unlikely to me, but in any case they did address your point about the market place.
Re: (Score:2)
they became the norm because the vast majority of consumers WANTED THEM.
Consumers don't "want" anything. Consumers are marketed to and told what they desire. There was no problem drinking Coke that consumers were desperate to have resolved by the power of plastic.
Beer, Wine, and liquor are largely sold in glass even now; because for the most part consumers seem to want it that way.
Beer and wine are sold in glass because of the long term storage requirements and the fact that PET bottles have far higher O2 ingress properties leading to really poor shelf life. If it were possible to put them in plastic then no doubt the companies would be marketing the virtues of that wonder material because it is
Re: (Score:2)
The bottle is a hazard to health.
The contents of the bottle (sugar or artificial sweeteners ) are also a hazard to health.
Just stick to water (from the tap... filtered if possible) instead of flavored water.
Re: (Score:2)
You use hard to recycle products, your tax is higher.
This also guarantees the cost of recycling is prepaid can be given to recyclers on a per ton (audited, input/output)
Add on to that a minimum deposit so it makes getting the stuff to recyclers more likely.
Yes, it will make stuff more expensive, but it is no longer "socialising" the costs like the current system does.
Re: (Score:2)
Time these bottle deposits be fixed to make people want to return the bottles and force stores to take all bottles
Do you have any evidence other than your own slackness to show that this isn't working? A quick Google search shows that California in general has a damn high recycling rate for plastic bottles and the deposit scheme is working well. Why wouldn't you return a bottle for just a few cents? I mean you're literally going to the place anyway.
Oblig. (Score:2)
Here we go again (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it was. It was a new added cost for every existing bottling plant. They had to replace all of their bottle handling machinery with plastic handling machinery, and it wasn't cheap.
Recycling (Score:2)
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. 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
I'm willing to believe that Coke and Pepsi are wrong, but California municipalities also misled a lot of people with their recycling programs, in some cases punishing people who didn't properly sort their garbage.
It was completely reasonable to believe that if you put a plastic bottle into the recycling bin, it would be recycled, and that wasn't Pepsi's fault.
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the manufacturer's responsibility to recycle. It's their responsibility to make their product reasonably easy TO recycle.
After that, it's just down to the consumer to take responsibility for their convenience of packaging, and to recycle and sort what they throw away. Part of the reduced price a consumer pays for a conveniently packaged product is due to the tiny little inconvenience of them having to properly dispose of the packaging. (or product) Consumers that take advantage of the lower cost and then don't recycle properly are basically cheating the system.
Recycling and sorting your trash is a social responsibility. People that don't do it need to grow up and act responsibly. And I'm 100% fine with them getting hit with a ticket or something for not doing their part. Things like plastics are a convenience that comes with a cost on the back end, and anyone not willing to contribute to that pay-back is just being a parasite to the rest of the community and taking advantage of the system at a cost to the rest of the community.
I was talking with someone awhile ago about recycling, noticing she has a few food cans in the garbage instead of the recycling bin. When asked why that was, she said that a few of the cans are just "too much work to clean out" (becacuse the food is sticky and requires a little clean-out) so she just throws them away. True, recycling does happen more when its more convenient, but it needs to happen ALL THE TIME, not just when it's the easiest option.
And if the state is having problems with their recycling program, that's not the company or the consumer's fault. Everyone needs to be doing their part for this to work.
Re: (Score:3)
And if the state is having problems with their recycling program, that's not the company or the consumer's fault. Everyone needs to be doing their part for this to work.
No. Absolutely not. It is not up to consumers to figure out what kind of plastics can be recycled and what can't. This is a stupid layover from early recycling where there was no municipal option and those who were gung ho about recycling did all this themselves. Today, municipalities should be handling sorting garbage in two bins: one for paper/paper-like products, the other for everything else. They can then train a small number of people at a small cost relative to the overall budget to know exactly what
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
This post reads more like the knee-jerk response from slashdot troll than a genuine take on corporate responsibility in plastic recycling. The lawsuit isn't about consumer blame or cash grabs. You would know that if you bothered to read it, but obviously that is not the case, here. It is about stopping companies from making deceptive claims about recyclability that have little basis in reality. The issue is not consumer laziness or convenience -- it's that companies have long misled the public about the e
Should be suing city council. (Score:3)
So, here's the disclaimer: I work in the recycling industry. The suit targets the wrong people.
It's their responsibility to make their product reasonably easy TO recycle.
PET (from which Coke and Pepsi bottles are made) is one of the most sought after polymers for recycling, and is one of the easiest to recycle. It is already being recycled in Alabama, of all places. And there is already a PET recycling facility in Riverside, California [resource-recycling.com]. Who knows why Riverside - which is just an hour east of LA
Re: (Score:1)
The text you quoted addresses reusability, not recyclability. Ar least when I was younger, there was a slogan: "reduce, reuse, recycle" that implied they were usually separate solutions.
Re: (Score:2)
The text you quoted addresses reusability, not recyclability.
It has the word "recycle" multiple times, but doesn't say reusable anywhere. I don't think many people thought plastic bottles were reusable, except for occasional art projects and such.
Re: (Score:2)
The text talks about what consumers did and believed with respect to recycling, but the only related descriptions it applied to these bottles were "single-use" and "disposable".
Recycling, Is Fair Play. (Score:2)
..California municipalities also misled a lot of people with their recycling programs, in some cases punishing people who didn't properly sort their garbage. It was completely reasonable to believe that if you put a plastic bottle into the recycling bin, it would be recycled, and that wasn't Pepsi's fault.
When a taxpayer citizen ends up being punished in some way for not complying with recycling, perhaps it’s completely reasonable for those citizens to initiate their own legal action.
Misleading, can lead to lawsuits. A country just taught its citizens that.
Pepsi and Coke should sue the people of LA (Score:3, Funny)
LA should ban all plastics (Score:5, Interesting)
If they were serious and not pulling a cash grab they would lead the way and ban all plastics from the city.
Re: (Score:2)
All plastics? You will end up with chaos if you do that. Plastics are in too many things, including the keyboard you're using right now.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. That is exactly my point. This isn't about the environment. It is about a fat cash grab and virtue signaling.
It would cause chaos and hurt to ditch plastics? Ok, great, true, then why are they suing over them but not mandating dramatic reduction?
They're not even considering mandating plastics only for absolutely required industry, medical, etc, uses and removal from consumer junk.
Follow the money, as always, it'll lead you to the truth.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, lawsuits are always really about the money. Always.
Soft drink bottles are made from PET (Score:2)
Too many types of plastic [Re:Soft drink bottl...] (Score:2)
In some sense the real problem here is that we have too many types of plastics, each of which has a different requirement for how to recycle it (and what can be made from the recycled product), and hence recycling plastic is difficult because each piece of plastic, value maybe 1, has to be sorted and sent to the proper recycler.
Priorities, Priorities (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
"Yet, I cannot return without losing a substantial amount of money."
Because your freeloading ass can't be bothered with tax like a respectable citizen. You literally say this in your second sentence. GTFO and STFO.
Recycling is not sustainable. (Score:4, Interesting)
Like it or not, plastics can usualy only be recycled 2-3 times before they become too damaged structurally to the point of unusable.
The same applies to other materials. Paper, for example can be recycled 5 to 7 times.
Only glass and (most) metals can be recycled an infinite number of times.
Sure, recycling plastic can help us make most of the materials, milk them as long as we can but, ultimately, it's just a delay tactic and eventually we'll need to either burn or bury that plastic somewhere.
This means that recycling plastic is not sustainable by design and we're just being fed a convoluted fairytale by those who benefit from manufacturing and selling plastic to protect their profits.
Re: (Score:2)
So? After three cycles of being a bottle, let them become packaging.
Re: (Score:2)
What about the stuff inside the bottle (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Only if you believe bad teeth, digestive issues, obesity, diabetes, and chronic dehydration are a problem.
You people complain about everything! (/s)
When will they sue tire companies? (Score:2)
At the same time, there is growing concern about the health and environmental consequences of microplastics
50% of marine microplastics are from tire dust. When will they sue the tire and car companies?
Re: (Score:2)
Accurate. Some research says even more than 50%:
https://www.sciencenews.org/ar... [sciencenews.org]
https://www.plasticstoday.com/... [plasticstoday.com]
https://www.thedrive.com/news/... [thedrive.com]
But be careful of whataboutism. The fact that dust from tire abrasion is a problem doesn't mean that we should not deal with other problems.
Re: (Score:1)
My other comments in this discussion make it clear that I am in favor of holding retailers responsible for the products they sell. It should be their responsibility as they are distributing the products to consumers, the manufacturers are not doing that. (There may be some grey area where the corporations own the vending machine distributors or similar — you can allegedly get a Coca-Cola vending machine installed at no cost if you have a high traffic area for example.)
But tire dust is clearly the sing
9% recycled eventually means nearly 0% (Score:2)
Even if you take that 9% of plastic gets recycled, As it gets used again, Likely 9% of the recycled products then get recycled. Over time it all ends up in the environment. Plastic just doesn't seem like a good long term (20, 50, 100 years) material.
Then just ban their sale. (Score:2)
day one (Score:2)
If this lawsuit is not thrown out on day one, it can only indicate a corrupt judge.
Re: (Score:1)
Is this a shitpost? How did "corrupt politicians" pollute LA? It's in a basin valley bowl where traffic smog can't escape. That's God's fault; sue God. (Or at least the founders of LA)
ok L.A. county (Score:2)
Coke is doing OK here in Australia (Score:2)
In Australia many of their plastic bottles (certainly the 600ml size that I typically buy) are made from 100% recycled plastic.
And I see ads all the time from Coke that specifically promote putting empty cans and bottles in the container deposit/reverse vending machine so they can be properly recycled.