California's Attorney General Rob Bonta, in conjunction with a coalition of environmental nonprofits, has launched lawsuits against ExxonMobil, alleging the company's involvement in a "decades-long deception campaign" regarding plastic sustainability and recycling.
The legal action, filed in the San Francisco County Superior Court, is the result of a two-year probe into the petrochemical industry's practices.
The complaint draws on subpoenaed documents to argue that ExxonMobil has been aware of the limitations of plastics recycling since the 1970s, yet continued to promote it to justify increased plastic production.
Attorney General Bonta stated: "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."
In May 2024, industry groups sought to quash a subpoena related to the investigation, but their efforts were preliminarily dismissed by a federal district judge this month, who ruled that the probe did not infringe upon First Amendment rights.
A report by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) in February supported claims that plastic recycling has long been recognised as economically and logistically unviable by producers, despite their public endorsements of it.
CCI president Richard Wiles described the lawsuit as a pivotal moment in combatting global plastic pollution.
He accused ExxonMobil of duplicity, stating: "Just as Exxon knew and lied about how its fossil fuel products cause climate change, the polluter has also known and lied for decades about the reality that its plastic products could never be recycled at scale."
Wiles added: “From climate to plastics, Exxon’s entire business model is based on lying to the public about the harms its products cause.”
The legal challenge includes six distinct claims against Exxon Mobil, encompassing environmental destruction, greenwashing, misleading advertising, public nuisance, unfair competition and water pollution.
The second lawsuit, led by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and water protection agencies, links the failure of plastics recycling to the escalating problem of aquatic plastic pollution.
Bonta believes that the dual lawsuits exert greater pressure on ExxonMobil, stating: "More is more, more is better."
The lawsuits specifically target Exxon Mobil as the leading producer of polymers for single-use plastics, which, along with packaging, make up nearly 40% of global plastic production and are seldom recycled due to technological and economic hurdles.
ExxonMobil has contested the allegations, with a spokesperson asserting that advanced recycling technologies offer a practical solution to plastic waste.
In a statement, an ExxonMobil spokesperson said the company is “bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn’t be recycled by traditional methods”.
She blamed California officials – not the oil industry – for the plastic waste crisis. “For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective,” she said. “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.”
