California Sues ExxonMobil Over Allegedly Misleading Plastics Recycling Program

Ryan J. Farrick — September 25, 2024

An image of Exxon Mobil’s Baton Rouge refinery. Image via Wikimedia Commons/user:WClarke. (CCA-BY-4.0).

“Today’s lawsuit,” Bonta said, “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,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

California has filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, accusing the oil and gas company of waging a decades-long “campaign of deception” against consumers and the public good.

According to NBC News, the lawsuit was filed earlier this week in a San Francisco-based Superior Court. In their complaint, state attorneys claim that ExxonMobil promoted recycling as a “cure-all for plastic waste,” even though it knew that most recycling methods cannot adequately eradicate plastic contaminants.

California also said that ExxonMobil has violated state regulations on marketing and water bodies.

“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,” Bonta said in a statement. “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,” Bonta said, “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,” Bonta said.

Gavel on copy of lawsuit; image by Wirestock, via Freepik.com.

In a press release, the attorney general indicated that many of the products promoted as recyclable by ExxonMobil cannot actually be recycled—and are, instead, disposed of in ways that are less-than-friendly to the natural environment.

“ExxonMobil knew that 95% of the plastic in the ‘blue bin’ was going to be incinerated, go into the environment, or go into a landfill,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told NBC News in an interview. “They knew and they lied.”

The lawsuit states that:

Almost 92% of the plastics processed through or with ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” technologies do not become recycled plastics, but are instead re-used as fuels.
Most of the recycled “plastics” produced by ExxonMobil’s recycling program contain so little plastic that they cannot actually be considered real plastics.
ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” technologies allegedly cannot even break down common consumer plastics, like those contained in potato chip bags.

“ExxonMobil’s ‘advanced recycling’ program is nothing more than a public relations stunt,” Bonta’s office said, “meant to encourage the public to keep purchasing single-use plastics that are fueling the plastics pollution crisis.”

Bonta’s office is asking that ExxonMobil be ordered to create an “abatement” fund, the resources provided by which could be used to mitigate plastic-related pollution. The attorney general also suggested that the fund could run a “re-education” campaign to help consumers learn which plastics cannot, and cannot, be effectively recycled.

ExxonMobil has since said that its recycling programs are effective, and claimed that the company has recycled more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste.

“For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective,” an ExxonMobil spokesperson said in response to the lawsuit. “They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem.”