California sues Exxon Mobil over plastic recycling ‘sham’

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of environmental nonprofits announced two separate but related lawsuits against Exxon Mobil on Monday. The lawsuits aren’t about the oil giant’s contribution to climate change, but about its role in the plastic pollution crisis.

The attorney general’s lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, is the culmination of a two-year investigation into what Bonta called the petrochemical industry’s “decades-long campaign of deception” about the sustainability of plastics and the feasibility of plastic recycling. The complaint, based on documents requested by Exxon Mobil and trade groups it belongs to, alleges that Exxon Mobil knew about the technical and economic limitations of plastic recycling since the 1970s but promoted it anyway and used it to justify its boom in plastics production.

“The company has perpetuated sham solutions, manipulated the public and lied to consumers,” Bonta told reporters at a news conference Monday. “It’s time for Exxon Mobil to pay the price for its deception.”

The attorney general’s complaint includes six separate claims against Exxon Mobil, including destruction of natural resources, false advertising, greenwashing, nuisance, water pollution and unfair competition. The nonprofits involved in the second, narrower lawsuit are the Sierra Club and three water protection groups — Heal the Bay, San Francisco Baykeeper and Surfrider Foundation — that link the failure of plastic recycling to the growing plastic pollution in the waters they’ve spent millions of dollars cleaning up. Bonta said the two lawsuits put more pressure on Exxon than just one. “More is more, more is better,” he said Monday.

The lawsuits name Exxon Mobil as the world’s largest producer of polymers used to make disposable plastics — products such as grocery bags, cutlery and takeout containers that are used for only a few minutes before being thrown away. These products, along with packaging, account for nearly 40 percent of global plastic production and are unlikely to be recycled due to technological and economic constraints.

In the US, the total recycling rate for plastic is only 5 percent. It has never been higher than 10 percent. Most plastic is burned, sent to landfills, or becomes litter in the natural environment.

Cleaning up and preventing plastic pollution costs taxpayers in California alone about $420 million a year, according to Heal the Bay CEO Tracy Quinn, who spoke to reporters Monday. Chemicals used in plastics, as well as the accumulation of small plastic particles in the environment and in people’s bodies, can also contribute to health problems.

The attorney general’s 147-page lawsuit alleges that Exxon Mobil’s actions directly contributed to the spread of plastic. First, it says, Exxon Mobil’s predecessors and trade groups worked to normalize the use of disposable plastics in the early 20th century. In the 1960s, Exxon and Mobil pushed dozens of disposable plastic products designed to replace their more natural, biodegradable counterparts. The 2011 book Plastic: A Toxic Love Story For example, describes how Mobil’s plastic produce bags were designed to replace the paper ones that were once the norm in supermarkets, and how Hefty’s plastic garbage bags have put an end to the habit of consumers lining their trash cans with newspaper.

When plastic began to litter roadsides and waterways, Exxon, Mobil and trade groups to which the companies belonged tried to suppress public concern — and the threat of government regulation to reduce plastic production — by promoting anti-litter campaigns that blamed consumers, the attorney general’s complaint says.

They also promoted recycling, reportedly spending millions of dollars on advertising beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. A 12-page editorial-style ad in the July 1989 issue of Time magazine, for example, told readers that there was an “urgent need to recycle” to keep plastic out of landfills and the environment. However, documents cited in the lawsuits show that members of the Society of the Plastics Industry — one of the trade groups to which Exxon and Mobil belonged — had been discussing the impracticality of plastic recycling since the 1970s. A 1973 internal report claimed that “once plastics leave production sites, they are almost never recovered” for recycling. Documents show that other industry groups publicly set recycling goals they knew they could not meet.

“Lies,” Bonta told reporters. “The ultimate goal was to get people to buy, buy, buy, and drive Exxon Mobil’s profits up, up, up.”

The latest deception, he alleged, involves a supposedly new way of recycling products that Exxon Mobil and other companies call “chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling.” This type of recycling involves melting plastic into its component polymers and, in theory, reforming it back into plastic products. Exxon’s corporate communications suggest that there are “no apparent technical limitations on how many times a plastic product can be put through advanced recycling processes.”

However, most chemical recycling companies have not been able to expand beyond demonstration capacity and cannot process large volumes of post-consumer plastic waste. Exxon Mobil has one operating facility in Texas, and according to documents obtained by the attorney general’s office, 92 percent of the plastic that goes through chemical recycling processes there is not turned into new plastic products; it is turned into fuel.

Bonta’s office called Exxon Mobil’s promotion of chemical recycling “nothing more than a public relations stunt designed to encourage the public to continue purchasing single-use plastics, fueling the plastic pollution crisis.”

In response to Grist’s request for comment, an Exxon Mobil spokesperson said that “advanced recycling works” and that the company has used it to “process more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials, diverting it from landfills.”

“For decades, California officials have known their recycling system is ineffective,” the spokesperson said. “They failed to take action, and now they are trying to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills.”

Other companies facing legal action for contributing to the plastic pollution crisis include Coca-Cola, Frito Lay and Pepsi, all of which were named in a lawsuit filed earlier this year by the city of Baltimore. Separately, New York State Attorney General Letittia James sued Pepsi last year over pollution along the Buffalo River.

Bonta told reporters on Monday that he is seeking civil penalties against Exxon Mobil, including forcing the company to forfeit revenue it earned as a result of its deceptive marketing. He said he wants “billions of dollars” from Exxon Mobil to clean up existing plastic pollution and re-educate California consumers about the risks of plastics and the limitations of recycling. His lawsuit and that of the nonprofits also seek an injunction that would force Exxon to stop promoting plastic recycling.

“It’s time for Exxon Mobil to tell the truth,” Bonta said.

Environmental groups not involved in the lawsuits applauded the attorney general’s efforts and said they hope it will lead to legal action in other jurisdictions. “This is the most consequential lawsuit ever filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and ongoing lies about plastics recycling,” Judith Enck, president of the environmental advocacy group Beyond Plastics and a former regional director of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement. “This lawsuit will set an invaluable precedent for others to follow.”