SACRAMENTO: The US state of California filed a lawsuit against oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, accusing the company of conducting a “decades-long campaign of deception” regarding plastic recycling.
Misleading campaign
The state’s Department of Justice claimed on September 23 that ExxonMobil had been deceiving Californians for half a century through misleading public statements and marketing campaigns.
These efforts allegedly promised that recycling would solve the increasing plastic waste issue produced by the company, according to a press release from California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office. The suit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, accuses ExxonMobil of being the largest producer of polymers used in single-use plastic that becomes plastic waste in California, Xinhua news agency reported.
It seeks to compel the company to “end its deceptive practices that threaten the environment and the public,” the release said. Additionally, Bonta is seeking an abatement fund, disgorgement, and civil penalties for the harm caused by plastic pollution to California’s communities and environment.
“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. ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardising our health,” he continued.
The Attorney General’s office said that most plastic products cannot be recycled, either technically or economically, but the alleged deception purportedly led consumers to purchase more single-use plastics than they would have otherwise.
PR tactic
The lawsuit also criticises ExxonMobil’s recent “advanced recycling” project as a public relations tactic to encourage the continued use of single-use plastics. The reality, according to the lawsuit, was that most discarded plastic ends up in landfills, incinerated, or dumped into the environment.
