California sued ExxonMobil Monday, alleging it deceived the general public for half a century by promising that recycling would tackle the worldwide plastic pollutions disaster.
Legal professional Normal Rob Bonta’s workplace stated that even with recycling applications, lower than 5% of plastic is recycled into one other plastic product within the U.S. though the objects are labeled as “recyclable.” In consequence, landfills and oceans are stuffed with plastic waste.
ExxonMobil didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Bonta, a Democrat, stated a coalition of non-profit environmental organizations has filed an identical lawsuit in opposition to the oil large, which is likely one of the world’s largest producers of plastics. The state’s lawsuit is a separate motion. Each fits allege ExxonMobil misled the general public via statements and slick advertising and marketing campaigns.
Bonta’s workplace stated in a press release that the legal professional normal hopes to compel ExxonMobil to finish its misleading practices and to safe an abatement fund and civil penalties for the hurt.
“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 stated in a press release.
“ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health,” he stated.
On Sunday, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into regulation a ban on all plastic buying luggage at supermarkets.
ExxonMobil knew that plastic is “extremely costly and difficult to eradicate” and that plastic disintegrates into dangerous microplastics, but it promoted recycling as a key answer via information and social media platforms, based on the lawsuit.
On the identical time, it ramped up manufacturing of plastics, the lawsuit states.
These days ExxonMobil has been selling “advanced recycling” — also called “chemical recycling” — and saying it would higher flip outdated plastics into new merchandise, the lawsuit states.
