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In a landmark lawsuit filed this week the California Attorney General accused ExxonMobil of “deceptively” promoting chemical recycling as a solution to the plastics crisis, citing a recent report by ProPublica and expanding on our findings.
In June, we looked into the oil giant’s claim that it had turned discarded plastic into new fruit cups through an “advanced” chemical recycling technology called pyrolysis. We’ve broken down the math to show how little recycled content goes into products made this way, and how companies are increasing that percentage in their marketing.
The lawsuit cited the fruit cup example alongside the attorney general’s own findings, which reveal an even more extreme gap between what ExxonMobil advertises and how much recycled plastic its products contain.
ProPublica reported that pyrolysis plastic can contain up to 10% recycled content. Because the technology is shrouded in secrecy, we have not been able to determine the specific amount in ExxonMobil’s products.
Citing internal company documents, the suit claims ExxonMobil’s process results in less than 0.1% recycled plastic.
Still, it marketed the cups as “30% ISCC PLUS Certified Circular Content” — short for 30% recycled — using a controversial accounting method called mass balance, which allows recyclers to pump up a product’s advertised recyclability by reducing its advertised recyclability. from other, less profitable products.
The lawsuit cited a ProPublica report on the first federal crackdown on mass balance, which took place last month when the Environmental Protection Agency banned its use in a voluntary program for sustainable products. According to the California lawsuit, the weight scale is “widely criticized, including by some representatives of the plastics industry, precisely because it is misleading to the public.”
ExxonMobil has a “serious financial interest” in seeing mass balance methods “widely accepted and even enshrined in law,” the lawsuit states. Indeed, continuing to deceive the public.” there is ExxonMobil’s business model.”
At a news conference Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta called out the oil giant for “falsely promoting ‘advanced recycling’ as a solution to the plastics crisis,” calling it ExxonMobil’s “biggest greenwashing campaign ever.”
In a statement, an ExxonMobil spokesperson insisted that advanced recycling works. “To date, we have processed more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials and out of landfills.” California officials have known for decades that the state’s recycling system is inefficient, the statement said. “Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to resolve the issue.”
The California lawsuit doesn’t just focus on chemical recycling. He accused ExxonMobil of misleading the public about the sustainability of plastics for decades, first by promoting traditional recycling despite knowing the plastic was functionally non-recyclable, and more recently by promoting advanced recycling as a panacea. Unlike traditional recycling, advanced recycling uses heat or chemicals to break down plastic into its molecular building blocks. But it has done little to improve America’s 5% plastic recycling rate, and it can’t solve the environmental damage or health problems caused by microplastics and toxic chemicals.
The recycling of plastics is “a hoax, a lie, a deception,” Bonta said at the press conference. “One thing ExxonMobil is actually doing is recycling their lies.”
Judith Enck, founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, called the California action “the most consequential lawsuit in the country” in terms of the accountability of the plastics industry, and told ProPublica that it reminded her of the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s that ultimately led to billions. dollar settlement for misleading advertising about the risks of smoking.
In the lawsuit, in order to mitigate the damage caused by the company’s actions, they are looking for a reduction fund. Bonta told reporters that the fund — which he hopes will be “billions of dollars” — will pay for efforts such as educating the public about the truth about plastic recycling. Enck said he wants money to expand California’s recharge and reuse infrastructure. This could include installing washing machines in schools and hospitals to reduce single-use plastics, or installing water bottle refill stations, which appear in airports but are rare in other public places.
Bonta’s action was filed on the same day as the a separate lawsuit by four environmental protection groupsincluding the Sierra Club. The lawsuit similarly accuses ExxonMobil of misleading the public about the recyclability of plastics. Bonta and the leaders of the groups spoke at the same press conference.
Enck said the reporting by ProPublica and other news outlets “created a crumb for the litigants.” The California lawsuit comes two years after Bonta’s office sent subpoenas to ExxonMobil and industry trade groups to investigate “their historic and ongoing efforts to deceive the public.”
The lawsuit also referred to the company’s cooperation with professional groups such as the American Chemistry Council. Between 2020 and 2023, for example, the company gave the council $19.4 million for an advertising campaign and national policy work on advanced recycling. One video, which has been viewed more than 8 million times on YouTube, said: “Imagine a future where plastic is not wasted, but recycled over and over again into things that make our food fresher, safer our families and make our planet cleaner.”
This ad campaign, “led by ExxonMobil, deceptively tries to convince consumers that recycling, particularly ‘advanced recycling,’ will save the day in order to continue saturating the population and the planet with single-use plastic,” the lawsuit states.
“It is disappointing that the legal action has diverted time and resources from our industry’s efforts to increase the circular economy of plastics,” the American Chemistry Council said in a statement. “However, we remain steadfast in our mission to advocate for effective policy, work with communities and invest in new technologies that help increase plastics recycling and the use of recycled plastics in products, contributing to a more sustainable future.”
ExxonMobil’s ads are misleading because the company knows its advanced recycling process is not economically viable and can only handle small amounts of consumer waste, the suit says. In fact, only about 8% of plastic waste fed into an advanced recycling system becomes new plastic; the rest is burned as fuel or turned into other non-plastic products. Even if ExxonMobil were to operate a potential future project that was more efficient, it could only convert 13% of waste plastic into new plastic.
“The truth is that ExxonMobil’s ‘advanced recycling’ program is less like a recycling program,” the lawsuit says, “and more like a waste disposal or destruction program for the incineration solutions ExxonMobil has proposed in the past.”