California sues ExxonMobil over plastic recycling, alleging ‘campaign of deception’

The California attorney general sued ExxonMobil on Monday, alleging the company waged a decades-long “campaign of deception” to mislead consumers and convince them that recycling was a viable solution to plastic waste.

The complaint, filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco, claims that ExxonMobil promoted recycling as a “cure-all for plastic waste,” even though the company knew that plastic would be difficult to eradicate and that some recycling methods could not handle much of the waste produced.

It also alleges that ExxonMobil violated state regulations on water pollution and deceptive marketing, among other things.

“Exxon Mobil knew that 95 percent of the plastic in the blue bin was going to be incinerated, dumped into the environment or sent to a landfill,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in an interview. “They knew that and they lied.”

In a statement responding to the complaint, ExxonMobil said “advanced recycling” is effective and that the company has kept more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste out of landfills through the method. The term refers to chemical or thermal recycling: processes that break down plastic into its basic chemical components for potential reuse.

“For decades, California officials have known that their recycling system is not effective. They failed to act and are now looking to shift the blame. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem,” ExxonMobil said.

The lawsuit represents a new avenue in the legal fight to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for pollution and their aggressive business practices. In other lawsuits, state attorneys general and environmental nonprofits have sued oil and gas giants over carbon pollution and its role in climate change and extreme weather events.

The new trial, which the attorney general’s office is billing as the first of its kind, will put the life cycle of plastics and the potential dangers of microplastics at the center of attention.

The state is seeking a jury trial and to compel ExxonMobil to disgorge some of its profits and other civil penalties.

“We want them to put billions of dollars into a reduction fund,” Bonta said.

Environmental groups welcomed the announcement.

“This is a major event. I hope it opens the floodgates,” said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a national initiative aimed at ending plastic pollution.

Enck said previous lawsuits have targeted individual plastic products or companies that sell them, but “this is the first time we’re going upstream and trying to hold the production companies accountable.”

She added that she was skeptical of claims about the benefits of advanced recycling because the process often turns plastic into transportation fuel.

Bonta agreed, calling the process a “farce” and “another version of the same old lie.”

The complaint claims that ExxonMobil is the world’s largest producer of polymers used to make single-use plastics derived from fossil fuels.

It alleges that ExxonMobil and its predecessor companies, Exxon and Mobil, for decades promoted single-use plastics through industry groups, advertising campaigns and other marketing initiatives, at one point even using the Boy Scouts to sell plastic kitchen bags and trash bags as a fundraiser.

Industry groups encouraged Americans to adopt a “throwaway lifestyle” and downplayed public concerns about the environmental risks of plastic, the complaint says. In 1973, industry executives labeled those who worried about plastic waste “enemies,” according to internal communications from the Society of the Plastics Industry (now known as the Plastics Industry Association), cited in the complaint.

As public concerns grew, ExxonMobil and its predecessors proposed mechanical recycling as a solution, despite internal industry warnings that it was not a permanent or feasible solution.

“They had plastic pollution issues, people were concerned, and they were discussing internally what they were going to do about it,” Bonta said. “And their response was to promote recycling, even though they knew it wasn’t something that could be used and couldn’t be implemented reliably, technically or financially.”

One example cited in the complaint: Exxon, Mobil and other petrochemical companies formed the Council for Solid Waste Solutions in 1988, which took out a 12-page ad in Time magazine encouraging recycling.

In the United States, the plastic recycling rate has never exceeded 9%, according to the complaint.

She also calls microplastic pollution a “crisis.”

Scientists have discovered microplastics in freshly fallen snow in Antarctica, near the summit of Mount Everest and in the Mariana Trench, evidence of the pervasiveness of this type of pollution.

Microplastics may have harmful effects on the environment and human health, some scientists say. Early studies suggest they could cause inflammatory reactions and cell damage in the human body.

A study published earlier this year showed that people who have microplastics and nanoplastics in plaque lining a major blood vessel in the neck may have a higher risk of heart attack, stroke or death.

However, further research is needed to understand the risks that microplastics may pose to human health.

Leehi Yona, an assistant professor of environmental and climate law at Cornell University, said the lawsuit opens a second front in the fight to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.

“We’ve seen a number of lawsuits based on the evidence about what these companies knew about climate change and how they misled the public,” Yona said. (California is one of several states and localities that have sued companies over their contributions to climate change.)

But the new lawsuit extends that approach to claims about plastics, she said.

“I think these lawsuits are extremely important, not only for their legal merits, but also to draw attention to the false claims made by some of these companies, in the same way that the lawsuits against the tobacco industry were about how they misrepresented the links between smoking and lung cancer,” Yona said.

Several nonprofits, including the Sierra Club, the Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay and Baykeeper, jointly filed a separate lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Monday, also in San Francisco. The attorney general’s office and the nonprofits are coordinating their legal approach, and both complaints contain similar claims.