In a first of its kind lawsuit, California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday accused ExxonMobil of a decades-long greenwashing strategy that falsely promises recycling will address the global plastics pollution crisis.
In a double-barreled approach, a second lawsuit was filed against ExxonMobil by a coalition of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Health of the Bay and Baykeeper. Exxon is the largest producer of single-use plastics in the world, according to their lawsuit.
Both suits were filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco. Among other complaints, they charge the company violated fair competition laws by allegedly lying to the public.
While the state is suing for public harm, the nonprofits are suing for private harm. They want the company to pay for the costs of beach cleanups and the harm caused by plastic washing up on the shore around small businesses.
“The other part where the cases overlap is the injunctive relief,” said Nialle McCarthy, one of the attorneys representing the nonprofit group. “That’s the most significant part of the case, because what you’re looking for is an end resolution where Exxon stops producing single-use plastics and stops pushing deceptive advertising about recyclability. California consumers have a great deal of interest in recyclability. If they’re getting non-truthful information, it completely changes the marketplace and what they would and would not buy.”
Beginning in 2022, Bonta’s office began issuing subpoenas to the corporation. Bonta said in a statement that the DOJ uncovered new documents showing that ExxonMobil has misled consumers and continues to do so.
In a joint press conference with the nonprofits on Monday, Bonta said ExxonMobil falsely promoted all plastic as recyclable, when most plastic products are not and likely cannot be recycled, either technically or economically.
“To this day, ExxonMobil’s biggest greenwashing campaign includes falsely touting ‘advanced recycling’ new technology that will solve the plastic pollution problem,” said Bonta. “False. It’s neither new nor advanced nor recycling. The truth is advanced recycling has been around for decades. It’s just a fancy way of saying that heat or chemicals are used to break down plastic instead of grinding it up manually.”
ExxonMobil issued a statement Monday saying that California leaders have known for decades that the state’s recycling system isn’t effective.
“They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others,” according to the statement from ExxonMobil. “Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills. 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.”
Bonta said that the company is talking a big game, “Two-thirds of advanced recycling does little more than turn plastic into fuel to feed ExxonMobil’s highly lucrative single-use plastic empire.”
Bonta’s lawsuit includes evidence that the plastics industry successfully fought restrictions in California, blamed Asian countries for ocean plastics (even though they imported U.S. plastics) and deceptively advertised and then abandoned recycling initiatives. The lawsuit said microplastics have been found in our lungs, maternal and placental tissue and breast milk. Manufacturing plants and materials recovery facilities generate hundreds of millions of tons of toxic air pollution, often in or near marginalized communities.
The suit charges that the plastics industry was aware of the ocean pollutions plastic crisis in the 1970s, and that the industry coopted chasing arrows recycling symbol, leading consumers to believe they were using products that were recyclable when they were not.
“In reality, only about 5 percent of U.S. plastic waste is recycled, and the recycling rate has never exceeded 9 percent,” he said, adding that ExxonMobil has increased its production capacity by roughly 80% in the past decade, while cleaning California coastlines have cost municipalities and taxpayers over $1 billion each year.
Bonta claims ExxonMobil hid behind trade groups with environmentally friendly sounding names like the Council for Solid Waste Solutions or Partnership for Plastics Progress.
“We are demanding that ExxonMobil fund to the tune of billions of dollars to abate the harm caused by their deceit, their lying, their perpetuation of the business of recycling,” said Bonta. “It would include things like reeducation, telling people the truth.”
Why has it taken 50 years for a state to sue the producers of single-use plastic materials?
McCarthy, an attorney representing the nonprofit groups, said it took years of research by nonprofits, governments and journalists to uncover enough evidence to successfully bring the case.
“They didn’t learn that Exxon had internal documents describing that plastics were actually not recyclable,” McCarthy said. “It’s been an incredibly well orchestrated cover up. It wasn’t until the last few years that people started to focus on who knew what when.”
By 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans by mass than fish, said Allison Chin, president of Sierra Club.
“ExxonMobil is the world’s largest producer of single-use plastic polymers, generating approximately 6 million metric tons of plastic waste annually. That’s the equivalent to the weight of 300,000 garbage trucks,” Chin said.
Miho Ligare, of the Surfrider Foundation, said plastic pollution can be found everywhere in the ocean.
“It’s so pervasive that the spray of breaking waves launches microplastics back into the air, so pervasive that scientists are actually using spiderwebs to measure airborne plastic pollution,” Ligare said. “Microplastics are also found in tap water, bottled water, even beer. Our food is so contaminated with microplastics that on average, each of us are eating the equivalent of a credit card every week.”
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