California attorney general sues Exxon, alleging company misled consumers about plastics recycling

The California attorney general announced a lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Monday, alleging it engaged in a decadeslong deception about whether the plastics it manufactured can be recycled.

“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,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday in a news release. “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 recording-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.”

Bonta said in April that he would investigate fossil fuel and petrochemical companies for their role in causing the plastic pollution crisis, but Monday’s action was solely against Exxon. Bonta said in a news conference Monday announcing the suit that there may be others added, but Exxon was the largest producer of the building blocks of plastics.

While some plastics can be recycled, many are difficult to recycle. The attorney general’s office pointed to industry documents from the 1970s calling plastics recycling “infeasible” and casting doubt that recycling plastic could ever be economically viable, according to the April announcement.

Bonta specifically named Exxon’s advanced recycling program as being misleading on Monday.

“Ninety-two percent of plastics in advanced recycling become transportation fuel — only a very small amount is recycled,” he said. “Exxon can only recycle about 1% of its own plastic.”

Exxon pushed back, touting the efficacy of its advanced recycling process.

“For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective. 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 and keep plastic out of landfills,” a spokeswoman said. “The first step would be to acknowledge what their counterparts across the U.S. know: Advanced recycling works. To date, we’ve processed more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials, keeping it out of landfills. We’re bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn’t be recycled by traditional methods.”

The lawsuit aims to hold a plastics producer responsible, said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, and uses consumer law to do it.

“Exxon spends money lying to the public and we have data that shows it’s not accurate,” she said. “This is the most significant plastics lawsuit in the nation.”

The majority of plastic products can’t be recycled and the U.S. plastic recycling rate has never broken 9%, the April announcement said. 

“The state has been battling plastic pollution in the legislature and through regulatory rulemaking proceedings for years, and today’s lawsuit by the AG opens another front in the battle against harmful single-use plastics,” said Julia Stein, deputy director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law School.

California has already banned all plastic shopping bags, in a move signed into law this weekend by Gov. Gavin Newsom.