California Sues ExxonMobil for Allegedly ‘Deceiving the Public on Recyclability of Plastic Products’

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, claiming it engaged “in a decades-long campaign of deception” around plastic recycling.

ExxonMobil is the world’s largest producer of polymers, the key ingredient in single-use plastics. AG Bonta says the company “has been deceiving Californians for half a century through misleading public statements and slick marketing promising that recycling would address the ever-increasing amount of plastic waste ExxonMobil produces.”

The lawsuit alleges that ExxonMobil worked to convince the public that all plastics were recyclable, when the majority are not, either because it is not technically possible or because it is not economically feasible. As a result, the lawsuit says only 5% of plastic is recycled in the US, and that figure has never gone above 9%.

More recently, ExxonMobil continues to deceive the public by touting “advanced recycling” as the solution to the plastic waste and pollution crisis. “Advanced recycling” (also known as “chemical recycling”) is an umbrella term used by the plastics industry to describe a variety of heat or solvent-based technologies that can theoretically convert certain types of plastic waste into petrochemical feedstock, which can be used to make new plastic. Under its “advanced recycling” program, ExxonMobil uses heat to break down plastic waste. ExxonMobil promotes its “advanced recycling” program as a breakthrough in technology that will make plastics sustainable but hides important truths about its technical limitations, including that:

• The vast majority—92 percent—of plastic waste processed through ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” technology does not become recycled plastic, but rather primarily fuels,
• The plastics that are produced through ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” process contain so little plastic waste that they are effectively virgin plastics deceptively marketed as “circular” (co-opting a term typically understood as a full circle of sustainable reuse, where waste becomes raw material) and sold at a premium,
• ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” process cannot handle large amounts of post-consumer plastic waste such as potato chip bags without risking the safety and performance of its equipment,
• Plastics produced through ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” program, in ExxonMobil’s best case scenario, will only account for less than one percent of ExxonMobil’s total virgin plastic production capacity, which continues to grow.

The AG’s office says ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” program amounts to a PR stunt designed to keep people buying single-use plastics while hiding their true impact on the environment.

“Plastics are everywhere, from the deepest parts of our oceans, the highest peaks on earth, and even in our bodies, causing irreversible damage—in ways known and unknown—to our environment and potentially our health,” said Attorney General Bonta. “For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible. ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health. Today’s lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil’s decades-long deception, and we are asking the court to hold ExxonMobil fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis through its campaign of deception.”

The lawsuit should come as no surprise, especially given ExxonMobil recently made the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) list of the top seven countries that undermine democracy worldwide. ExxonMobil was #3 on the list, specifically for its decades-long practice of hiding its own research on the true environmental impact of fossil fuels.

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