California sues ExxonMobil over alleged plastic recycling deceit

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil Sept. 22, accusing the company of misleading the public about the sustainability of plastics recycling—a deceit that the suit says led to the global plastics pollution crisis.

Citing publicly available and internal industry information, Bonta says the oil and chemical manufacturer has been deluding people in California for 50 years by claiming that mechanical recycling and more recently chemical recycling are the answer to the plastic waste problem. Bonta is seeking unspecified damages that include profits ExxonMobil made as a result of the alleged misleading information. He also seeks a fund to clean up the damage that he says ExxonMobil has done to the environment and people’s health in California.

“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,” Bonta said in a statement. The lawsuit targets ExxonMobil because the company is the largest producer of the polymers that end up as waste in California. California spends over $1 billion per year to manage plastic waste, he said at a press conference.

According to the Washington Post, ExxonMobil responded to the lawsuit by saying that California’s recycling system is broken.

People like recycling plastics because it makes them feel they’re being environmentally friendly, says Björn Beeler, international coordinator for the International Pollutants Elimination Network, an advocacy group. But the reality is that companies don’t want to recycle plastics.

“It’s too expensive,” Beeler says. “Used plastics are a liability and not an asset on the balance sheet.” When companies promote the idea that plastics are recycled and therefore sustainable, they move this liability from themselves to the public, he says. “California is just the first state to call a spade a spade in the industry’s crooked poker game.”

The filing names the American Chemistry Council (ACC) as an industry group through which ExxonMobil “widely spread deceptive messages about the environmental benefits and recyclability of plastic.” In an emailed response, ACC spokesperson Matthew Kastner says, “It is disappointing that legal action has diverted time and resources away from our industry’s efforts to scale up a circular economy for plastics, where more plastics are reused and remade instead of discarded.”

ExxonMobil is a major contributor to the ACC and has paid the organization $23.4 million since 2020 for national lobbying efforts and to promote the use of plastics, according to the California Attorney General’s office.

The filing names the Plastics Industry Association as another ExxonMobil-linked group that promotes the plastics industry and has allegedly spread misinformation on ExxonMobil’s behalf. C&EN contacted the Plastics Industry Association for comment, but did not receive a reply before this story was published.