Make Polluters Pay — Tell Big Plastic to Drop Their Lawsuit

Big Plastic made the mess. Now its lobbyists are suing to escape accountability.

California passed a landmark plastic pollution accountability law to make companies reduce waste, improve packaging, and help pay for the pollution they create. It is a simple idea: if corporations profit from throwaway plastic, they should not be allowed to dump the cleanup costs on the rest of us.

Now the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors has joined 17 Republican-led states in a lawsuit to block that law before it can fully take effect. NAW is the corporate trade group putting its name on this attack — and its members should not get to hide behind lobbyists while communities drown in plastic waste.

Corporate lobbyists hate accountability. They want taxpayers, towns, sanitation workers, and polluted communities to keep cleaning up the plastic waste their industries profit from.

Tell Big Plastic and their lobbyists: Drop the lawsuit and stop helping Big Plastic dodge responsibility.

Plastic waste is choking waterways, filling landfills, harming wildlife, and breaking down into microplastics found in our air, water, food, and bodies. The companies flooding the market with throwaway packaging should not get a free pass while the rest of us pay the price.

California’s law is common sense: polluters should pay for pollution.

But if NAW’s lawsuit succeeds, it could gut one of the strongest plastic accountability laws in the country and scare other states away from taking action. That would be a huge win for corporate polluters — and a disaster for communities fighting plastic waste.

Big Plastic wants to keep the profits and dump the cleanup costs on us. We cannot let them.

Add your name now to tell Big Plastic and the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors to drop this lawsuit and stop fighting laws that make polluters pay.

The petition to National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors President and CEO Eric Hoplin reads:

“Drop the lawsuit challenging California’s plastic pollution accountability law. Stop helping Big Plastic dodge responsibility, and support policies that make packaging companies reduce waste and pay for the pollution they create.”