Guest essay by Nick Pope Contributor
The state of California is suing ExxonMobil, alleging that the company deceived the public about how effective recycling plastic products is and facilitating pollution.
Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit against ExxonMobil in San Francisco County Superior Court, asserting that the company participated “in a decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis.” In addition to being one of the biggest American players in the oil and gas industry, ExxonMobil is also a top producer of the chemicals and other inputs used to create plastic products, according to The Washington Post.
Download the lawsuit as a PDF
“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 of his lawsuit in a Monday statement. “ExxonMobil lied to further its [record]-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.”
California filed its lawsuit against ExxonMobil just one day after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that will ban the provision of plastic bags at the point of sale in stores. The new lawsuit against the oil, gas and petrochemicals giant aligns with “climate nuisance” lawsuits that have been filed in Democrat-controlled jurisdictions in recent years, which generally allege that major companies like ExxonMobil misled the public about their products’ role in climate change and should be held accountable for doing so.
ExxonMobil slammed California’s lawsuit in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective. 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,” an ExxonMobil spokesperson said. “The first step would be to acknowledge what their counterparts across the U.S. know: 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. We’re bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn’t be recycled by traditional methods.”
Bonta is rumored to have interest in running for governor to replace the term-limited Newsom in 2026, though the attorney general recently told the San Francisco Chronicle that he will not announce a prospective run until after November’s elections. Eco-activist groups, including the Sierra Club and Baykeeper, will be joining a Monday virtual press conference held by Bonta’s office to discuss the new litigation, the attorney general’s office said.
Judith Enck, a former official for the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who now runs an activist group called Beyond Plastics, commended Bonta for filing the lawsuit.
“This is the single most consequential lawsuit filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and continued lying about plastics recycling,” Enck said in a Monday statement. “Attorney General Bonta is leading the way to corporate accountability and a cleaner and healthier world. This lawsuit will set an invaluable precedent for others to follow.”
Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, slammed the lawsuit in a Monday post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“The communist failure that is California is suing ExxonMobil because radical greens lied to everyone about the feasibility of recycling,” Milloy wrote in his post.
Bonta’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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