The US-based Center for Climate Integrity has uncovered never-before-published evidence highlighting that fossil fuel companies and the plastic industry have known and lied for decades about how plastics will never be recycled at scale.
The new report from the Center for Climate Integrity could lay the foundation for new lawsuits against Big Oil and the plastics industry for the fraud of plastic recycling.
It explains how these companies have used “the false promise of plastic recycling to exponentially increase virgin plastic production over the last six decades,” and holds them responsible for “creating and perpetuating the global plastic waste crisis and imposing significant costs on communities that are left to pay for the consequences”.
According to the report, petrochemical companies, including oil giants such as ExxonMobil, have long known that “recycling cannot go on indefinitely, and does not solve the solid waste problem”, a point that was made by the founding director of industry trade group the Vinyl Institute at a conference in 1989.
Despite this, the report suggests that fossil fuel companies, petrochemical companies and their trade associations and front groups have prioritised profit and continued to fraudulently market plastic recycling as a solution.
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Also included in the Center for Climate Integrity’s report is a quote from an Exxon employee who told staffers at the American Plastics Council in 1994 that when it comes to plastic recycling, “we are committed to the activities, but not committed to the results”.
A public investigation into the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, is already ongoing with oil giant ExxonMobil – the world’s top producer of single-use plastic polymers – being subpoenaed as part of that investigation.
The Center for Climate Integrity’s vice president of legal and general counsel Alyssa Johl said: “Big Oil and the plastic industry’s decades-long campaign to deceive the public about plastic recycling has likely violated laws designed to protect consumers and the public from corporate misconduct and pollution”.
“Attorney generals and other officials should carefully consider the evidence that these companies defrauded the public and take appropriate action to hold them accountable.”
