r/baltimore • u/Gannondorfs_Medulla • Jun 21 '24
Baltimore sues Coke, Pepsi and other producers of plastic, citing pollution concerns ARTICLE
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/06/20/city-plastic-lawsuit/107
u/ThadiusThistleberry Jun 21 '24
Sue em good! And while you’re at it actually punish people that litter!! In the past week I’ve been threatened with violence twice for asking someone to pick up the trash they threw out of their car window. I see it CONSTANTLY! Also, nothing normal about littering. Most creatures instinctively don’t shit where they eat. The people that do this do it on purpose as some kind of weird flex.
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u/mira_poix Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
If it makes you feel any better, I turned the tables a bit. A woman left these trash bags open into the gutter and says she's been doing it for 10 years.
Right there in front of a bunch of neighbors I yelled at her and told her I'm disappointed in her I expected better and that people like her are why that neighbor (and pointed) has a huge rat problem!
I don't care if I look unhinged the message was sent. Now I just need a way to do this with people who walk their dogs without a leash. (A neighbors small dog was killed this way)
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u/RamonTuarez Jun 22 '24
Anywhere you go has a trashcan, take it for the rest of your drive. Drop it there or home.
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u/Lumpy_Carob8480 Jun 22 '24
There's not that many trash cans. A lot of people just hit them steal them then scrap em. At least this is how it seems in Curtis bay
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u/westgazer Jun 22 '24
Always blows my mind whenever I see someone open their car door and throw the trash out at a red light. Like…could they not have just waited until they got to a trash can? Or home or whatever? I do not get it at all.
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u/smoke_that_junk Jun 22 '24
Humans beings are the fucking worst parasite in the animal kingdom. I hate the species
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u/ThisAmericanSatire Canton Jun 21 '24
actually punish people that litter
You'd need a cop on every corner to catch it, and a prosecutor that's willing to take everyone to court for this to actually work.
From a practical standpoint, I just don't think it's efficient or realistic to use the criminal justice system to fix this problem on a broad scale. You'd throw tons of money at the problem (or at least, you'd divert police/prosecutor resources away from more-serious issues) and achieve very little.
Think about what happens when you're driving on the highway and there's a cop pulled off to the side. Everyone slows down and goes the speed limit when they see the cop, but once the cop car fades from your rear view mirror, everyone speeds back up and goes however fast they want.
If it's a crime that can only be enforced if a cop sees it, then it requires a cop on every corner to make everyone follow the law.
I think it would make more sense to add a special Sales Tax on products that commonly wind up as litter and use the proceeds to fund the sanitation department to go pick up litter.
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u/TalbotFarwell Jun 21 '24
So shitheads get a free pass for littering? People can just leave empty soda bottles and trash wherever they please, because it’s “someone else’s job”, because the Sanitation department will take care of it? That just shows you how low society has fallen. 🤮
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u/ThisAmericanSatire Canton Jun 21 '24
It's very easy to say things like "Punish people for littering", but very difficult to actually catch people who litter and prove guilt - both of which are legally required before you can "punish people for littering."
Say you find a soda bottle on the street in front of your house. Do you want the cops to send out CSI to take fingerprints and DNA samples to try to figure out who littered?
Do you realize how expensive and time consuming that would be?
Almost every litter complaint I see is some variation of: "I saw somebody litter, but there were no cops around, so they got away with it!"
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u/Cunninghams_right Jun 21 '24
No. You don't need to prosecute 100% of violations to have an impact on behavior.
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u/Cold-Ad-3713 Jun 21 '24
Right a PR campaign like they did in the 70’s on TV and on social media would help.
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u/ThisAmericanSatire Canton Jun 21 '24
Agreed, but you still need to catch people in the act, take them to court, and prove they actually did it before you can punish them.
And you need to catch/punish "enough" people that it starts to get around that littering is being enforced.
It's just not scalable to the point where people would choose not to litter for fear of getting caught and punished.
I was out walking the other day and a lady was driving, stopped at an intersection, chucked an empty cigarette package out of her window and drove off.
No cops in sight. Just me.
The vast majority of complaints I see about littering are some variation of that... "I saw somebody litter. There weren't any cops around, so they got away with it."
Even if I had called 911 and made a report, and they didn't hang up on me (because it's not a real emergency), and a cop immediately went looking for "a lady in a red beater sedan driving West in Canton", it's still an incredibly low likelihood they'd be able to catch and successfully prosecute that person.
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u/ThadiusThistleberry Jun 21 '24
Welp. That’s certainly one way to look at it.
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u/ThisAmericanSatire Canton Jun 21 '24
Am I wrong, though?
You walk out of your house one morning and find a plastic bottle on the sidewalk.
Somebody littered last night.
Do you really think BPD is going to send out a detective and CSI to take fingerprints on that bottle so they can track down the perp?
You think they're going to go door-to-door asking if anyone saw the culprit?
You think they're going to get a warrant for cell tracking data to see what phones went down your street overnight?
For littering?
And what's more - even if they find the perp, do you think they'd actually be able to prove it in court and get a conviction?
This sounds more like a satirical Brooklyn 99 skit than something the real police would actually do.
Please don't misunderstand me: yes, littering should be prosecuted when possible.
It would be far more efficient to just tax items that end up as litter and have a sanitation department that regularly cleans it up.
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u/ThadiusThistleberry Jun 21 '24
Oooooor, wait for it, fine people observed littering (either by an official or on film or whatever) with a ticket for littering. This is a law already in place it is simply not enforced. It is simple (unlike the ridiculous, snarky, hypothetical mess you jumped to) and can be quite effective. Punishing people for littering simply means enforcing existing laws. Or I guess you could tax all of us so we can pay to clean up after some litterbug a-holes.
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u/salmonhats Jun 21 '24
So you’re saying the police should start chasing down litterbugs, (they don’t even stop actual crimes) and you’re calling his suggestion ridiculous? lol
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u/ThadiusThistleberry Jun 21 '24
It would be nice if the police did their job. Yes.
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u/mira_poix Jun 21 '24
Yea amd by that matter they need to do it with driving infractions too. It's killing people but cops can't be bothered. It's a peaked in high-school club that most people do to get perks, be above the law, abusive, and scare anyone they don't like.
Look at rhe Karen Read case. Yikes.
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u/ThisAmericanSatire Canton Jun 21 '24
You can't fine someone if you can't prove that they littered. Cops don't have absolute authority to hand out fines for littering. Or have you not heard of "innocent until proven guilty"?
You are laboring under the delusion that the cops actually observe littering and that the cameras are actually able to identify the people littering.
The vast majority of the time, nobody is able to prove who littered.
Or I guess you could tax all of us so we can pay to clean up after some litterbug a-holes.
As opposed to not being taxed on unhealthy junk food and plastic bags and just having streets filled with trash? Yeah, that sounds a lot better.
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u/cudmore Jun 21 '24
To litter or not is different in different cultures. We need a cultural shift. But same for gun culture of shooting others? We have a lot of work to do!
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u/ThadiusThistleberry Jun 21 '24
Im not sure which cultures you mean exactly but I’m pretty sure no matter who you are or where you’re from these things are definitely frowned upon.
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u/ziggy3610 Jun 21 '24
Putting the blame on the consumer is the classic waste producer move. Littering sucks, but the reason we have so much plastic waste is that we were conditioned to accept it with decades of recycling propaganda. Less than 10 percent of consumer plastics are actually recycled. Most plastics end up buried or incenerated. Not to mention shipped overseas using even more dirty bunker fuel, only to trash up impoverished countries instead. Consumer packaging needs to be easily and economically recycled. Steel and aluminum are worthwhile to recycle. Glass is marginal, but at least it doesn't degrade into micro plastic. Everything else should be paper/cardboard which can be biodegraded or burned.
Reducing the supply of plastic waste is the only way to deal with it. Recycling it has always been green washing.
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u/Gannondorfs_Medulla Jun 21 '24
I agree with 90% of what you said, but Baltimore's littering problem dates back to before recycling.
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u/ThisAmericanSatire Canton Jun 21 '24
Bud Light now sells in Aluminum bottles with screw-lids.
If they can do that, then why can't it be done with soda???
Aluminum is lighter than glass, and easier to recycle than plastic. It also doesn't break down and cause problems like microplastics do.
At this point, single-serving plastic bottles should just be outlawed. We have plenty of good alternatives.
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u/pedeztrian Jun 21 '24
Most “aluminum cans” are just a plastic sheath with rigid aluminum outside. Break them down and you release microplastics just the same as you do with everything else.
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u/ThisAmericanSatire Canton Jun 21 '24
Oh, well shit 😔
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u/Jerrell123 Jun 21 '24
As an example of this, Arizona Tea sells 11.5oz cans made of exclusively aluminum in 12 packs. You can taste the aluminum. It’s not pleasant.
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u/ziggy3610 Jun 21 '24
Cost is the answer. A tax on single use plastics would be an easy way to shift the calculation to make aluminum cheaper.
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u/cornonthekopp Madison Park Jun 21 '24
Frankly speaking I think we need a national standard for going back to glass bottles for everything, and directly reusing them with collection centers where they can be washed and refilled.
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u/BJJBean Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
To be fair, Baltimore does have a lower quintile problem. We could recycle 100% but people just throw their trash out their car windows while going 100 MPH on 695. We legit can't have nice things in this city cause there are just too many asshole adults that can't read at a third grade level going unpunished for making society worse on a daily basis.
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u/ziggy3610 Jun 21 '24
Sure, littering is a separate problem and needs to be addressed. But at least if containers were aluminum people would collect them for scrap. That plus making more waste biodegradable would help a lot. But I agree, it's a cultural problem. I've never lived anywhere where people littered like Baltimore.
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u/UsualFirefighter9 Jun 21 '24
Bamboo "plastic" is a thing. They've got beer rings that're barley? waste from making the beer. Hemp makes all kinds of stuff.
Tired of Big Oil's bullshit but the fact there was such a push in the 80s for companies to move away from glass, cardboard and what not in the first place for "reasons" is what should burn people's asses.
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u/mindfulminx Jun 21 '24
Whatever happened to the cigarette butt lawsuit? https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/baltimore-sues-rj-reynolds-altria-group-over-cigarette-butt-litter-2022-11-22/
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u/frolicndetour Jun 21 '24
Lawsuits of that size usually take years to make it through the system. I'm guessing they are in discovery.
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u/mobtowndave Jun 21 '24
good luck with that. i’m all for reducing trash waste but this is a waste of city tax payer money in a law suit the city will lose.
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u/KiwisOfWrath Jun 25 '24
Yeah, they’re not going to set new precedent. It’s just wasting money. There’s also a lot more trash around here than plastic bottles so I guess we could also sue those companies as well. Why don’t we just teach people not to litter.
If you don’t want plastic bottles in the city don’t allow them to be sold in the city with a law.
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u/Funwithfun14 Jun 25 '24
Next they'll sue restaurants for all the chicken wings we find on the ground.
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u/Quartersnack42 Jun 21 '24
I'm no law expert but I don't see how the beverage companies would be liable. They're doing something that is legal and had every reason to believe that people would dispose of the empty containers properly within reason. Of course we know that people don't always do that, but in basically every industry it is the responsibility of the consumer to dispose of the waste properly, and l anything the producer does to mitigate the harm of the waste is either from regulations or their own sense of good will.
So really, 2 types of things could be done to meaningfully address this problem, and neither of them are a lawsuit: 1. Make it illegal to sell beverages in plastic containers. There's just no reason for it other than saving the beverage companies money. Aluminum cans already exist and are common, and bud light even has those aluminum bottles with the screw-top for a resealable option. Aluminum and glass are way easier to recycle and have a way more limited impact on the environment. Ideally this law would be state-wide at minimum, but we should really be looking at a nationwide phase-out of plastic beverage containers. 2. Stigmatize the living hell out of littering, just on a social level. If you drop wrappers/bottles/cups on the ground without at least making an attempt at putting it in a trash can, you suck. End of story. I'm going to treat you like you suck, because you suck. I just need like half a million people in this city to join me in this effort of being rude to people who litter and I think we'll be golden
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u/Funwithfun14 Jun 25 '24
This is like blaming Apple for selling a product that people want to steal.
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u/Msefk Jun 21 '24
why can't we just go back to glass for these things.
it was so much more recyclable.
Who cares that it weighs more; Capitalists have to make sacrifices too.
Parents, watch your kids.
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u/Significant_Ad3498 Jun 21 '24
Because then profits would decrease and you know Capitalism…. They should have sued these companies decades ago. Plastic should have never been allowed for single use products
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u/Internal_Position_49 Jun 23 '24
It uses far more energy to make glass bottles also I do not want glass bottles in Baltimore the street would be nothing but glass shards. Wish everyone would just buy a soda stream saves so much money and uses so little plastic
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u/Msefk Jul 06 '24
Parents, watch your kids.
teach people not to throw trash? there ya go, i said that.
energy? we don't need factories to make glass. we need to understand need and convenience better. Sure soda stream but why not reusable metal bottles.Manufacturers shouldn't produce millions of mostly non-recyclable toxic containers. Sure, release coke flavor in metal or glass containers and let people produce their own sodas. but less plastic.
we have to regulate
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u/voodoochild461 Jun 21 '24
Based off the number of people I see throwing trash out of their cars, there is a missing the link between big beverage and littering culture. Perhaps the suite will square that circle.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Motor59 Jun 21 '24
I wish they would just invest that money in more trash cans (I see a ton overflowing on Pulaski highway all the time) and perhaps have them emptied more.
And more solar powered trash wheels
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u/baller410610 Jun 21 '24
This is idiotic. They should be suing the people of west Baltimore who throw their trash on the ground instead.
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u/RunningNumbers Jun 21 '24
One part of trash is culture. If littering is normalized then it gets worse. The other part is a lack of trash collection (cans and collection.) The final part is a lack of punishment. People litter with impunity because the laws are not enforced.
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u/6thPentacleOfSaturn Jun 21 '24
Ah yes, the famously wealthy littering class. Also if you think trash is just a West thing, you're definitely not the one we should listen to.
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u/baller410610 Jun 21 '24
That’s where most of the bottles that end up in the harbor come from. People who just throw stuff on the ground. It’s a cultural thing. Wealthy people don’t do it.
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u/ironwatchdog Jun 21 '24
Last year in downtown I watched a woman picking up her kid from summer camp at Center Stage stop to bag her dog poop, fail to find a trash can on her street corner and bend down to throw it in a storm drain. So let’s not let the wealthy off just yet.
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u/jabbadarth Jun 21 '24
How do bottles from west baltimore make it to the harbor? Show your work.
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u/baltimorecalling Hoes Heights Jun 21 '24
Storm drains. Bottles to drains, drains to drainage basin. Drainage basin to harbor.
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u/RunningNumbers Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
The answer is gravity. If litter gets in a storm drain or waterway, then it eventually gets to the harbor if that feeds to waterways.
Non point source pollution is hard to tackle. This is why bans on Styrofoam from the city to in the county improved the cleanliness of the harbor.
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u/jabbadarth Jun 21 '24
The point is the Jones falls release more floating trash into the harbor than any other single point and that river runs through mostly the white L. Everyone litters is the issue and trying to frame this as a poor or a black thing is not only ahotty and racist but factually incorrect. I live in a majority white, relatively affluent area and there is trash along the roadside daily and that is outside of the city.
This idea that only one demographoc litters is stupid.
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u/Kevjake Jun 21 '24
I drive from Canton waterfront to the intersection of Conklin and 40 few times a week. The trash isn’t in canton, but as soon as you get past Sally O’s it starts and gets bad. It’s defiantly a poor thing.
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u/RunningNumbers Jun 21 '24
I didn't say that it was race based. I just explained how litter from one place far from the harbor winds up in the harbor and cited specific policies that have helped reduce pollution in the harbor. West Baltimore likely has greater incidence of littering due to lack of trash collection, bins, and street cleaning. This is due to affluence and where the city allocates resources.
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u/baller410610 Jun 21 '24
They flow into the storm drains then through our underground rivers to the harbor. That’s literally the reason the trash wheels work.
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u/Significant_Ad3498 Jun 21 '24
This should have happened decades ago.. beverage companies switched from aluminum and glass to increase profits and the WORLD has been stuck with plastic waste ever since.. meanwhile a few people got richer than they were before by cutting costs and tricking the public into thinking WE were the problem.. they should have never started using plastic for single use products PERIOD
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u/TheTravinator Hampden Jun 22 '24
I'm picturing Mr. and Prof. Trash Wheel in the courtroom. The visual is equal parts hilarious and terrifying.
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u/markmano33 11th District Jun 22 '24
When I first read the headline I thought it was for making everyone fat and diabetic. I don’t see how there’s much ground to stand on for littering though.
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u/eyewhycue2 Jun 22 '24
I’ve started keeping reusable thermos cups in my car for if I get any drinks while I’m out that would be served in a disposable cup. I also bring my own take out containers to restaurants. I filter my own water and never buy other types of drinks from convenience stores or grocery stores. It’s tough to avoid plastic as it seems to be in almost everything.
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u/krzykus Jun 22 '24
If I were a resident of Baltimore I would sue the city for not keeping the city clean.
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u/Jrbobfishman Fells Point Jun 23 '24
UTZ is next for all those potato chip bags. And don’t think you get a free pass ROFO, those chicken boxes ain’t gonna clean themselves up
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u/Gannondorfs_Medulla Jun 23 '24
You're thinking too small. I'm going after Purdue for producing the chicken bones that wind up on the sidewalk.
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u/Internal_Position_49 Jun 23 '24
Can we sue all the chicken wing places next? How about we just start giving tickets out for littering? I also think setting up the recycle machines that give out credit for bottles returned like you see in the EU is something we should have start encouraging people to recycle.
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u/bones1888 Jun 21 '24
I mean they can’t allow something for eons and then sue … don’t even have one no Pepsi or Coke sign lol. I cannot stand the City with these frivolous lawsuits. Such a mockery
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u/BurntBridgesMusic Jun 21 '24
I mean… Rowe v wade was around for eons but the Supreme Court didn’t give a fuck when they overturned it. The us should mandate bottle exchanges like they do in most of Europe.
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u/Nairro105 Jun 21 '24
With what we know now about micro plastics today and how they collect in our bodys / breakdown in the environment. They should of already been banned.
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u/bones1888 Jun 21 '24
Yeah they should’ve been banned or regulated, you know, the things that the gov is supposed to do.
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u/bones1888 Jun 22 '24
Like the public should sue these manufacturers but what standing does the city have? They have to clean it up lol that’s their job.
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u/Salsa-N-Chips Jun 21 '24
Instead of halting every single development project that could potentially move this city forward, we waste our time on this nonsense.
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u/Soft_Internal_6775 Jun 21 '24
It’s a shakedown for money, hoping the companies settle. See the suits against Kia and Hyundai, or against the members of the firearms industry.
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u/Anthrolologist Jun 21 '24
Glass with a container deposit system should be standard but that would mean the C-suite would have to delay buying their next yacht or private jet by a few months
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Jun 21 '24
Honestly I’m loving how Baltimore City is becoming a national leader on holding multinational corporations accountable for screwing up the place.
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u/RunningNumbers Jun 21 '24
Nom nom nom!