Aquamantra water bottle.
To crack down on bogus environmental claims, California three years ago passed a law prohibiting any plastic food or beverage container to be labeled biodegradable. The reason for the ban, state officials say, is that plastics can take thousands of years to break down in a landfill.
Taking advantage of that law, California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris has filed what her office calls a first-of-its-kind “greenwashing” lawsuit against three companies. She alleges that they made false and misleading claims by marketing plastic water bottles as “100 percent biodegradable,” as well as recyclable.
Named in the suit was ENSO Plastics of Arizona. It sells plastic bottles that, the state alleges, are falsely portrayed as biodegrading in landfills within five years because of an additive that they contain. The other targets of the suit are two companies that sell water in ENSO bottles, Balance Water Co. of New Jersey and Aquamantra Inc. of California, which touted the water bottles when it started selling them at a Whole Foods Market in Tustin, Calif., in 2009.
“These companies’ actions violate state law and mislead consumers,” Harris said in a news release.
Harris called the companies’ claims about the bottles being recyclable misleading, noting that the additive in the plastic is considered by the Association of Post Consumer Plastic Recyclers to be a “destructive contaminant.” As such, the state says, the plastic is unsuitable for recycling and recycling companies bear the cost of trying to remove it.
ENSO’s president, Danny Clark, told Plastics News, ““We stand behind our technology and the claims that our company makes.”
A representative of Balance Water, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, said the company will try to resolve the suit by changing its label and possibly its bottling. Still, Balance Water co-founder Martin Chalk said the New Jersey-based company believes that California “has taken a relatively extreme stance by banning all biodegradable labeling.”
“We went to quite a lot of expense and effort to use more environmentally friendly packaging,” he said.
The environmental claims ban that California passed three years ago will be extended to cover all plastic goods in 2013.
STUART SILVERSTEIN
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