California Sues ExxonMobil Over Plastic Recycling Claims, Citing FRONTLINE/NPR

California has sued ExxonMobil, alleging that the company deceived the state’s residents for decades by promoting recycling as the antidote to the plastic waste crisis “despite knowing that recycling was not a viable solution to the plastic waste and pollution problem.”

The lawsuit cites joint reporting from FRONTLINE and NPR, whose 2020 documentary collaboration Plastic Wars investigated how the makers of plastic — which is derived from oil and gas — publicly promoted recycling for decades, despite privately expressing doubts from almost the beginning that widespread plastic recycling would ever be economically viable.

Laura Sullivan, the correspondent and reporter on Plastic Wars, discussed the lawsuit on NPR’s Morning Edition on Sept. 24:

The suit says that the company violated laws around false advertising and creating an unfair competition and a public nuisance. It also cites them, actually, for pollution.

But the premise of that is that ExxonMobil, along with the oil industry as a whole, knew as far back as the 1970s that plastic recycling was never going to work. I mean, it’s expensive. It’s difficult. It’s toxic. But the suit says that the company set out on this ambitious plan to deceive consumers about recycling so that they would, you know, buy more plastic.

Sullivan described the suit’s aims:

The state wants Exxon to pay billions of dollars to remedy the problem. There’s a little bit of cleanup. But mostly, they say they want Exxon to reeducate the public. … [California Attorney General Rob] Bonta says he wants Exxon to explain to the public that the vast majority of all the plastic that they’re holding in their hands is not actually recyclable. It’s just trash.

In the announcement of the lawsuit, the state described ExxonMobil as the largest producer of plastic polymers that are made into single-use plastics by other companies and contribute to plastic pollution in California. In a statement to NPR, an ExxonMobil spokesperson said that “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.”

Watch Plastic Wars below, on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, in the PBS App and on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. Directed by Rick Young, the documentary was produced with American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Watch the full documentary, Plastic Wars: