The lawsuit, filed Monday in San Francisco County Superior Court, seeks to hold the oil titan accountable for allegedly falsely promoting all plastics as recyclable. Some recent estimates suggest that only a small fraction of the plastic produced gets recycled: about 9 percent worldwide and about 5 to 6 percent in the United States.
“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. “ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.”
During a news conference Monday, Bonta said his lawsuit is, in part, demanding ExxonMobil put money into a fund “to the tune of billions of dollars to abate the harm caused by their deceit, their lying, their perpetuation of the myth of recycling.”
The money, Bonta said, could go toward public education about recycling as well as research and development into ways to effectively recycle plastics. The lawsuit is also seeking other remedies, including civil penalties, he said.
ExxonMobil defended its approach to recycling.
“For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective,” Lauren Kight, an ExxonMobil spokesperson, said in a statement. “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.”
The 147-page complaint alleges the company’s efforts to push plastic recycling violate a bevy of state laws, including on water pollution, unfair competition and false advertisement. The company, the lawsuit states, promoted the widely known “chasing arrow” symbol on plastics “despite knowing that it was deceiving the public into thinking that all plastics are recyclable.”
The suit also accused ExxonMobil of making misleading claims about its “advanced recycling” program, which the company has allegedly promoted as a “breakthrough in technology that will make plastics sustainable but hides important truths about its technical limitations.” More than 90 percent of plastic waste processed by ExxonMobil allegedly becomes fuel instead of recycled plastic, according to the suit.
“Advanced recycling,” also known as chemical recycling, is a controversial practice that typically uses a process called pyrolysis, which uses heat to break down plastics. The plastics industry argues the practice is safer than incineration, but environmental groups have pushed back. The Natural Resources Defense Council, for instance, describes it as “fraught with health, environmental, social and economic concerns.”
Kight said that to date, ExxonMobil has processed more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials.
The legal action comes amid a broader effort to stem the deluge of plastic that ends up in the environment. A recent study found Earth’s oceans contain more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic. The material can also break down into microplastics or nanoplastics that can enter human blood, lungs and other organs.
On Sunday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation that would ban all plastic shopping bags from grocery and convenience store checkouts statewide by 2026. Last year, New York sued PepsiCo, accusing the soda and snack company of polluting the Buffalo River with packaging from its products.
In recent years, more than a dozen states, counties and cities have sued oil companies, seeking to hold them responsible for the damage they say their products have caused. Many of these cases are still working their way through the court system.
But on Monday, Bonta said he felt “very confident.”
“We feel good about this case, our legal claims, our legal basis,” he said.
Bonta’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil was heralded by environmental advocates.
“This is the single most consequential lawsuit filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and continued lying about plastics recycling,” Judith Enck, a former senior Environmental Protection Agency official in the Obama administration who now heads the advocacy organization Beyond Plastics, said in a statement.
Christy Leavitt, plastics campaign director for Oceana, an international advocacy group, applauded Bonta.
“Recycling is like trying to mop water from an overflowing bathtub while the faucet is still running,” Leavitt said. “We need to turn off the faucet and reduce the production of single-use plastic.”
