Exxon invested in plastic recycling tech, and now California is suing Exxon, alleging deception

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday against ExxonMobil for allegedly misleading consumers about the potential for plastics recycling. According to Bonta’s complaint, Exxon made misleading statements that “advanced recycling” could recycle all plastics, which the complaint says is impossible.

One would think that environmentalists would support plastics recycling, but apparently that's not enough. Judith Enck, founder of "Beyond Plastics," an anti-fossil fuel group, told the Wall Street Journal that advanced recycling is a “pseudo solution” and a marketing tactic to prevent efforts to stop consumers from using plastics. 

Writing on his “Energy Absurdities” Substack, energy analyst David Blackmon points out that Exxon is the largest recycler of plastics, and the company is investing billions to build an advanced plastics recycling center in Baytown, Texas. Referring to Enck's claims, “Even if that is accurate, the same could be said of pretty much every offshore wind project the federal government has spent billions subsidizing over the last three years,” Blackmon wrote.

Real solutions

In a statement sent to Just the News, Exxon says Bonta’s lawsuit is just California deflecting responsibility for the failures of its recycling program. “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,” Exxon's statement said.

The company insists that advanced recycling works, and said that to date, it’s recycled more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials. “We’re bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn't be recycled by traditional methods,” the company said.

Advanced recycling aims to turn plastic polymers back into their original molecules so they can be processed and used again as plastics or other products, such as jet fuel. According to an anti-plastic ProPublica investigation, advanced recycling produces 15% to 20% usable plastic materials, while the remaining material becomes fuel and other chemicals.

Bonta was interviewed on CNBC's "Squawk Box" about the lawsuit. Co-anchor Becky Quick referred to Exxon's statement and said, "I honestly am trying to understand where the breakdown and what the problem is."

Bonta argued that Exxon is deceiving the public because advanced recycling doesn't work like aluminum can recycling, where the can is melted down and made into another can. He claimed that Exxon was lying about advanced recycling by not making it clear that some of the products produced by advanced recycling are not plastics. He also said that they're lying by claiming advanced recycling can recycle 100% of plastics. 

"It's not technically or financially feasible," Bonta said. Though, he didn't explain how that would always be the case or how Exxon is deceiving people by not having immediately realized that goal. 

Quick said that producing jet fuel is still diverting from landfills, which she said is better than nothing. Bonta replied, "They don't get any credit for advanced recycling, turning things into jet fuel that's emitted into the air and/or transportation fuel --" 

"So your point is we shouldn't have jet fuel?" Quick asked. 

"You flew here, though, right?" co-anchor Joe Kernen asked. 

"We travel," Bonta answered. 

Rockefeller campaign

Bonta’s lawsuit is part of a coordinated effort by anti-fossil fuel groups to open a new front in their efforts to stop consumers from accessing fossil fuels by shutting down the companies that produce them. Exxon is among the oil companies facing a deluge of climate lawsuits alleging the companies deceived the public about the impacts of climate change, a claim that critics say holds no merits.

The Rockefeller Family Fund, the Wall Street Journal reports, is funding more than 30 of these lawsuits. Earlier this year, the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which is funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund, published a report alleging that “Big Oil” deceived the public for decades and caused what it calls the “plastic waste crisis.” Bonta’s lawsuit cites the activists’ report and uses similar language.

For example, Bonta’s complaint states that Exxon’s “deceptive statements were designed to mislead consumers and the public … about the serious adverse consequences that would foreseeably result from continued and increased production of plastic products.” The CCI report claims that  “Petrochemical companies…have engaged in fraudulent marketing…designed to mislead the public about the viability of plastic recycling as a solution to plastic waste.”

The CCI report claims that “sorting technologies were woefully inadequate to handle the wide variety of plastics,” and Bonta’s complaint alleges that “the infrastructure, market, and technology for plastic recycling, particularly for single-use plastics, are woefully inadequate for the volume of plastics.”

Besides funding lawsuits against oil companies, the Rockefellers are also funding media outlets who report negatively on fossil fuels. The Rockefeller Foundation was among the anti-fossil fuel funders who provided the Associated Press with $8 million in 2022, specifically in “support” of the outlet's climate and energy coverage, which has been largely anti-fossil fuel. CBS News has teamed up with Rockefeller-funded Inside Climate News, an anti-fossil fuel publication, to produce multiple reports attacking plastics. 

Fighting back

ExxonMobil is also investing in carbon capture and hydrogen technologies. As with any of its initiatives, the company advertisements are full of hopes and promises. Critics of carbon capture point out the scale needed to significantly impact atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide is astronomical. The efficacy of hydrogen as a power source also has its share of doubters.

The question is whether will Exxon continue to invest in nascent green technologies if the company gets sued for deceiving the public when these investments fail to deliver solutions to environmentalists’ wide-ranging complaints about fossil fuels.

Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow with the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and publisher of “JunkScience.com,” told Just the News that all industries, including energy industries, have been increasingly reluctant to defend themselves against these attacks. They simply hope the controversy goes away. “But it never does, right? That strategy has been a failure,” Milloy said.

Exxon may be starting to realize that. Recently, the company pursued a lawsuit against anti-fossil fuel activist shareholders over their nuisance shareholder proposals. Despite a coordinated effort to get the company to withdraw the lawsuit, Exxon refused. Critics of the lawsuit, including California’s public pension plan CALPERS, failed in their bid to oust members of Exxon’s leadership over the controversy when a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in June.

At Exxon's 2008 shareholder annual meeting, Milloy presented a shareholder proposal on behalf of The Free Enterprise Action Fund. The proposal would have amended the company’s bylaws to “no longer accept shareholder and nuisance shareholder proposals.”

“Our proposal will stop the annual meeting from being a circus-like forum for the anti-Exxon campaign. We call on Exxon's bonafide shareholders and management to band together to fight the predatory Exxon haters,” Milloy said at the meeting. 

“I got a standing ovation,” Milloy said in an interview.

While the proposal wasn’t adopted, the company’s more recent efforts suggest the company starting to take a stand against groups who seek to destroy it through a variety of tactics, including lawfare.

“They’re lucky that they sell a product that people desperately need. If they sold an optional product, they would have been toast a long time ago,” Milloy said.