California is suing oil and gas giant ExxonMobil for allegedly lying to the public about the promise of plastic recycling, the state’s attorney general announced on Sept 22. “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,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.” An ExxonMobil spokesperson said in a statement that the real blame lies with the state of California for not addressing the issue sooner. “They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others,” the spokesperson said. ExxonMobil is the world’s largest producer of polymers used to make single-use plastic. But Bonta’s statement notes that as the public became concerned about plastic washing up on beaches and choking sea life, ExxonMobbil shifted the responsibility for pollution onto consumers. The company promoted recycling over reducing plastic consumption, the statement added, even placing a 1989 editorial-style advertisement in Time magazine titled “The Urgent Need to Recycle.” Bonta alleges that ExxonMobbil knowingly began misleading the public even before that ad, starting in the 1970s when it adopted and promoted the “chasing arrows” symbol on single-use plastics. The public was led to believe anything with that symbol can and will be recycled. In fact, the global plastic recycling rate is just 9%; in the U.S. it’s 5%. Roughly 79% of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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