California in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit alleges the nation’s largest plastic producer has lied about plastics recycling feasibility for decades.
Democratic state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s complaint, filed Monday in the San Francisco County Superior Court, says Exxon Mobil has and continues to mislead consumers through aggressive marketing campaigns offering false promises about the fate of most plastics.
Exxon, the world’s largest producer of polymers used to make single-use plastics, “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,” Bonta said in a statement.
The lawsuit stems from an investigation Bonta launched in April 2022 into the role Big Oil and petrochemical companies play in exacerbating plastic pollution. It seeks to end Exxon’s “deceptive practices,” according to a news release.
Less than 9 percent — with more recent estimates sitting closer to 5 percent — of all plastics get recycled into a new product, with a majority of single-use products ending up in oceans, landfills, litter or microplastics. That low recycling rate is due to a range of factors, including that not all types of plastics are accepted by mechanical recycling facilities.
Aware of the public’s dwindling trust in plastics recycling, the plastics industry has poured millions into promoting and scaling up “chemical” or “advanced” recycling, a set of technologies that use high heats or solvents to convert hard-to-recycle plastics back into their chemical building blocks for future reuse.
Bonta’s complaint says those “advanced” recycling promises are lies, too, and that 92 percent of plastics processed through Exxon’s technology will become fuels containing plastic-additive chemicals dangerous to public health.
Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The largest plastics industry groups, bracing for more recycling-related lawsuits, have defended “advanced” recycling technologies and said the current technical and economic feasibility concerns will be solved with more investment.
Environmental advocates like Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, applauded Bonta’s action.
“This is the single most consequential lawsuit filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and continued lying about plastics recycling,” Enck, also a former Obama-era EPA regional administrator, said in a statement.
Bonta’s lawsuit marks the first time a state has brought a civil suit against a petrochemical company over false recycling claims.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) last year sued PepsiCo, a company targeted as having its labels on the most single-use plastic products in the U.S., over claims that it also deceived the public about plastics recycling feasibility.
The allegations follow the same playbook levied against other Big Oil companies, “forever chemicals” manufacturers and tobacco companies: Companies engaged in aggressive marketing campaigns intent on hiding the true harms behind their products.
Bonta is also in the middle of litigation with the Plastics Industry Association and the American Chemistry Council over subpoenas relating to his office’s ongoing 2 ½-year investigation into the industry’s deceptive recycling claims.
