California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of environmental nonprofits on Monday announced two separate but related lawsuits against Exxon Mobil — not over the oil giant’s contribution to climate change, but over its role in the plastic pollution crisis.
The Attorney General’s Lawsuit, filed in the San Francisco County Superior Courtrepresents the culmination of a two-year investigation in what Bonta called the petrochemical industry’s “decades-long campaign of deception” about the sustainability of plastics and the feasibility of plastic recycling. Based on documents subpoenaed from Exxon Mobil and trade groups to which it belongs, the complaint says that since the 1970s, Exxon Mobil has known about the technical and economic limitations of plastic recycling but promoted it anyway, using it to fuel booming plastic production. to justify
“The company presented bogus solutions, manipulated the public and lied to consumers,” Bonta told reporters at a press conference on Monday. “It is time for Exxon Mobil to pay the price for its fraud.”
The attorney general’s complaint includes six discrete claims against Exxon Mobil, including destruction of natural resources, false advertising, greenwashing, public nuisance, water pollution and unfair competition. The nonprofit organizations involved in the second, more limited lawsuit include the Sierra Club and three water protection organizations: Heal the Bay, San Francisco Baykeeper and Surfrider Foundation, which link the failure of plastic recycling to increasing water plastic pollution that they have spent millions of dollars to clean up. According to Bonta, the two lawsuits put more pressure on Exxon than just one. “More is more, more is better,” he said Monday.
The lawsuits single out Exxon Mobil as the world’s largest producer of polymers used to make single-use plastics — products like grocery bags, cutlery and takeout containers that are used for just a few minutes before being thrown away. These products, along with packaging, are responsible for nearly 40 percent of global plastic productionand is unlikely to be recovered due to technological and economic limitations.
In the US, the overall plastic recycling rate is just 5 percent. It has never been higher than 10 percent. Most plastics are incinerated or sent to a landfill, or become litter in the natural environment.
According to Tracy Quinn, CEO of Heal the Bay, who addressed reporters Monday, cleaning up and preventing plastic pollution costs California taxpayers about $420 million a year alone. Chemicals used in plastics, as well as the accumulation of small plastic particles throughout the environment and in people’s bodies, can also contribute to health problems.
Associated Press
The attorney general’s 147-page lawsuit says Exxon Mobil’s actions directly contributed to the spread of plastic. First, it says, Exxon Mobil’s predecessor companies and trade groups worked to normalize the use of single-use plastics in the early 20th century. By the 1960s, Exxon and Mobil were pushing dozens of disposable plastic products designed to replace their more natural, biodegradable counterparts. The 2011 book Plastic: A toxic love story details how Mobil’s plastic produce bags, for example, were designed to replace the paper versions that were once the norm in grocery stores, and how the company’s Hefty brand of plastic trash bags helped displace the common consumer practice of trash cans with newspaper.
When plastic began to end up as litter on roadsides and in waterways, Exxon, Mobil and trade groups to which the companies belonged tried to silence public concern – and the threat of government regulation to reduce plastic production – by promoting anti-litter campaigns it shifted the blame to consumers, according to the attorney general’s lawsuit.
They also promoted recycling and reportedly spent millions of dollars on advertising starting in the 1980s and ’90s. For example, a 12-page, editorial-style ad in the July 1989 issue of Time magazine told readers there was a “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 — have been discussing the unfeasibility of plastic recycling since as early as the 1970s. A 1973 internal report claimed that “when plastics leave points of manufacture, they are almost never recovered” for recycling. Documents show that other industry groups publicly set targets for recycling that they knew they would not be able to meet.
“Lies,” Bonta told reporters. “The end goal was to drive people to buy, buy, buy and to drive Exxon Mobil’s profits up, up, up.”
The latest deception, he claimed, is related to a so-called new way of recycling products that Exxon Mobil and other companies call “chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling.” This type of recycling involves melting down plastic into its constituent polymers and, in theory, reforming them back into plastic products. That of Exxon corporate communication suggests that there are “no clear technical limits on how many times a plastic product can be put through advanced recycling processes.”
However, most chemical recycling companies were unable to function beyond a demonstration capacityand them cannot handle large volumes of post-consumer plastic waste. Exxon Mobil has one operational facility, in Texas, and according to documents obtained by the attorney general’s office, 92 percent of the plastic that undergoes chemical recycling processes there is not converted into new plastic products; it is converted into fuel.
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
Bonta’s office calls Exxon Mobil’s promotion of chemical recycling “nothing more than a public relations ploy intended to encourage the public to continue buying single-use plastics that are 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, keeping it out of landfills .”
“For decades, California officials have known that their recycling system is not efficient,” the spokesperson said. “They failed to act, and now they are trying to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to solve the problem and keep plastic out of landfills.”
Other companies facing legal action over their contribution to the plastic pollution crisis include Coca-Cola, Frito Lay and Pepsi, all named in a lawsuit filed earlier this year by the city of Baltimore. Separately, Letittia James, State Attorney General of New York sued Pepsi last year about pollution along the Buffalo River.
Bonta told reporters on Monday that he was seeking civil penalties against Exxon Mobil, and that the company would be forced to give up revenue it earned as a result of its misleading 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 plastic and the limitations of recycling. His lawsuit and the nonprofits are also seeking 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 complaints applauded the attorney general’s efforts and said they hoped it would lead to legal action in other jurisdictions. Judith Enck, president of the environmental advocacy group Beyond Plastics and a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said: “This is the single most consequential lawsuit filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and persistent lying about plastics recycling. statement. “This lawsuit will set a valuable precedent for others to follow.”
