California’s attorney general sued ExxonMobil on Monday, alleging that the company waged a decades-long “deceptive campaign” to mislead consumers into believing recycling was an effective solution to plastic waste. The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco, alleges that ExxonMobil promoted recycling as a “plastic waste cure-all” even though it knew that plastic is difficult to eradicate and that certain recycling methods cannot handle most of the waste generated.
It also alleges that ExxonMobil violated state regulations regarding water pollution and misleading marketing.
“ExxonMobil knew that 95 percent of the plastic that went in their blue bins was going to be incinerated, released into the environment or dumped in a landfill,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in an interview. “They knew, and they lied.”
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, ExxonMobil said “advanced recycling” is effective and that the method has prevented more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste from being sent to landfills. The term refers to chemical- or heat-based recycling that breaks down plastic into its basic chemical components so it can be reused.
“California officials have known for decades that our recycling system is ineffective. They have done nothing and now are trying to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to solve the problem,” ExxonMobil said.
The case marks a new path in the legal battle to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for pollution and aggressive marketing practices. In other cases, state attorneys general and environmental nonprofits are suing major oil and gas companies over carbon pollution and its impacts on climate change and extreme weather.
The new lawsuit, which the Attorney General’s Office says is the first of its kind, will focus on the life cycle of plastics and the potential harms of microplastics.
The state is seeking a jury trial and is seeking to force ExxonMobil to turn over a portion of its profits along with other civil penalties.
“We want them to put billions of dollars into the reduction fund,” Bonta said.
Environmental groups welcomed the announcement.
“This is a big deal and we hope it will spark a wave of awareness on plastic pollution,” said Judith Enck, executive director of Beyond Plastics, a national initiative aimed at eradicating plastic pollution.
Enck said previous lawsuits had targeted plastic products and the companies that sell them, but “this is the first effort to go upstream and hold manufacturers accountable.”
She added that she is skeptical of claims about the benefits of advanced recycling because the process often turns plastic into transportation fuel.
Bonta agreed, calling the proceedings a “farce” and “the usual string of lies.”
According to the lawsuit, ExxonMobil is the world’s largest producer of polymers used to make single-use plastics derived from fossil fuels.
ExxonMobil and its predecessor companies, Exxon and Mobil, have promoted single-use plastics for decades through industry groups, ad campaigns and other marketing efforts, at one point allegedly using the Boy Scouts to raise funds to sell plastic kitchen bags and garbage bags.
The lawsuit alleges that the trade groups encouraged Americans to adopt a “throwaway lifestyle” and downplayed public concerns about the environmental risks of plastics. According to internal documents from the Plastics Industry Council (now the Plastics Industry Association) cited in the lawsuit, in 1973, industry leaders called people concerned about plastic waste “the enemy.”
As public concern grew, ExxonMobil and its predecessor companies promoted mechanical recycling as a solution, despite warnings within the industry that it was not a permanent or viable solution.
“They had a plastic pollution problem, people were concerned about it, and there was a discussion internally of, ‘What do we do about this?'” Bonta said, “And their answer was, ‘Promote recycling,’ even though they knew it wasn’t practical and wasn’t something they could reliably scale technologically or financially.”
One example cited in the lawsuit is that in 1988, Exxon, Mobil and other petrochemical groups formed the Solid Waste Solutions Council and took out a 12-page advertisement in Time magazine encouraging recycling.
According to the lawsuit, the recycling rate for plastics in the United States has never exceeded 9 percent.
It also described microplastic pollution as a “crisis”.
Scientists have found microplastics in fresh snow in Antarctica, near the summit of Mount Everest, and in the Mariana Trench, demonstrating just how widespread this type of pollution is.
Some scientists say microplastics could have harmful effects on both the environment and human health, and early research suggests they can trigger inflammatory responses and cell damage in the human body.
A study published earlier this year found that people whose plaque lining major blood vessels in the neck contains micro- and nanoplastics may be at higher risk of heart attack, stroke and death.
Still, more research is needed to understand the risks that microplastics pose to human health.
Leahy Yona, an assistant professor of environmental and climate law at Cornell University, said the lawsuit opens a second front in the battle to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
“There are numerous evidence-based lawsuits now being filed about what these companies knew about climate change and how they misled the public,” Yona said. (California is one of many states and localities that have sued companies over their contributions to climate change.)
But the new lawsuit expands that approach to claims about plastics, she said.
“In my view, these cases are extremely important not only for their legal merit but also for the way they draw attention to the misrepresentation of some companies, similar to the cases against the tobacco industry for misrepresenting the link between smoking and lung cancer,” Yona said.
Several nonprofits, including the Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay and Baykeeper, jointly filed a separate lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Monday, also in San Francisco. The attorney general’s office and the nonprofits are coordinating their legal approaches, and both lawsuits make similar claims.