California Targets ExxonMobil’s Plastic Recycling Claims In Latest Lawfare Against Big Oil

“Exxon Knew!” The battle cry has inflamed and inspired climate activists for decades. Since the 1970s, they allege, “Exxon Knew” that human-caused climate change was “real” – but lied about it, claimed there wasn’t a “crisis,” and kept marketing its “planet-killing” fuels and petrochemical feedstocks. [emphasis, links added]

Now activists say “Exxon Knew” for years that very little plastic waste is even recycled.

The oil giant is deceiving regulators and consumers with claims that all plastics are recyclable and its “advanced recycling” processes keep enormous amounts of plastics out of landfills.

ExxonMobil’s “campaign of deception” demands a lawsuit, says California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Exxon Knew” that 95% of plastics in recycling bins are incinerated, get tossed onto roadways or end up in landfills and oceans.

“Exxon Knew” it was peddling lies when it promoted recycling as a “cure-all for plastic waste” – because eradicating all plastic use and disposal is impossible and many plastics can’t be recycled.

This is Mr. Bonta’s latest attack on fossil fuels. He wants a jury trial to help ensure big lawfare payouts. But he’s ignoring inconvenient realities and engaging in rampant deceptions of his own.

Plastics are ubiquitous: from eyeglass frames and lenses to televisions, computers, and cell phone housings, wind turbine blades and nacelles, solar panel frames, medical equipment, devices and garments, car and airplane interiors, backpacks, skis, football helmets, shoes, grocery bags and infinitely more.

Plastic packaging preserves and protects products that involve long, expensive, resource-intensive processes to grow or manufacture; it helps keep foods from spoiling or becoming bacteria-infested.

Plastics are cheap to produce, can be molded into infinite shapes and sizes, are corrosion-resistant, and don’t break easily (imagine shampoo and body wash in glass bottles).

They’re lighter than glass and even paper alternatives, meaning more can be packed on trucks and transported using less fuel. In many cases, there are no viable alternatives.

Plastics are essential for our living standards, safety, and the modern world.

But what happens when they break, wear out, or get tossed? For years they were thrown out with other trash. But environmentalists, politicians, and consumers increasingly demanded that cans, glass, and other throwaways be recycled. For many of us, recycling has become a habit.

Recycling turns low-value plastic garbage into valuable materials: window frames, boards for siding decks and fences, pipes to replace copper tubing that thieves steal, toys and toothbrushes, plates and utensils, diapers and clothing, carpeting and lawn furniture, soccer fields, bottles, cabinets, and more.

Neither ExxonMobil nor any other company promoted recycling as a magic solution or cure-all.

It’s more expensive than virgin plastic, especially when transportation and sorting costs are factored in. Smaller items can clog sorting screens. Colored plastics have fewer recycling options than clear or white ones.

Most importantly, many types of plastics have little post-use demand or simply cannot be recycled. Others are integrated with electrical circuitry (motherboards and keyboards) or with paper or metal (laminates for food containers), making it impossible to separate and recycle them.

Thermoplastics can be heated, melted reshaped, or re-extruded into new products. These are the familiar #1 (PET) soda and water bottles, #2 (HDPE) milk and detergent containers, many #4 (LDPE) grocery bags and squeezable bottles, and some #5 (PP) yogurt and butter containers.

Thermoset plastics contain polymers that form irreversible chemical bonds that make strong products that cannot be remelted: vulcanized rubber for tires, Bakelite kitchenware, jewelry and circuit boards, epoxy resins, Duroplast car bodies and toilet seats, polyurethane cushions, insulation and windshields, et cetera.

Styrofoam cups and egg cartons cannot be recycled without (rare) specialized equipment and processes.

Moreover, even thermoplastics can be recycled only 2-3 times before their polymer chains get shortened to the point where quality and durability become so low that the products are unusable.

(Newspaper, magazines, copying paper, and Kraft paper bags have the same degradation problem: after 6-7 trips to the recycler, the cellulose fibers are too shortened, damaged, and degraded to be reused. Steel, aluminum, and glass, however, can generally be recycled endless times.)

All these complexities explain why only a small fraction of plastics are recycled. ExxonMobil recycling 60,000,00-80,000,000 pounds of plastics per year may seem minuscule, compared to 73,000,000 tons of annual US plastic waste.

However, it’s equivalent to 430-570 offshore wind turbine blades (350 feet long; 140,000 pounds apiece) that only end up in Grand-Canyonesque landfills.

Plus, plastic waste can also be converted into diesel, aviation, and gasoline fuels, and even electricity.

An excellent solution is to turn plastics and most other garbage into electricity for our increasingly power-hungry society – especially as AI and data centers proliferate, and politicians mandate that we convert our gas stoves, ovens, furnaces, and water heaters to electric models.

A municipal waste-to-energy (WTE) / resource recovery facility operated by Reworld/Covanta performs these wondrous conversions just a few miles from my home.

Enormous quantities of normally landfilled, nonrecyclable home, business, industrial, government, and agricultural waste are dumped into a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials (eg, rocks), mixed thoroughly, and emptied into the combustion chamber, where everything is burned with natural gas at 2,000 degrees F until it’s fully combusted.

Process heat is converted to steam, which drives the turbines that generate 80 megawatts of electricity, enough for about 52,000 homes. Since 1990, the plant’s electricity has replaced the equivalent of some 2,000,000 barrels of crude oil each year.

Dust and odor are contained within the facility; water from the waste is recovered, treated, and used as coolant; and air and water pollutants are kept well below EPA standards.

Even plastic and metal e-waste (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, and AI and data center machines) and “clean, green” energy equipment like solar panels can be “recycled” this way.

Enough iron, steel, aluminum, copper, and other metals are recovered from the resultant ash to build 20,000 automobiles annually.

The process also melts and recovers glass – and even recovers metals from e-waste, light bulb bases, paper clips, staples, and metal bottoms from cardboard juice containers.

By the time the entire process is over, only nontoxic ash is left – about 5% of the original bulk mass of trash – and it gets used in cement and other applications or sent to landfills.

It reminds me of the old stockyard claim: The only part of the pig that isn’t used is the squeal.

So I have a few questions for Mr. Bonta:

• If you banish oil and gas, where will plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals, and other products come from?

• Which plastics and vital plastic products do you intend to eradicate? What will doctors, pharmacists, optometrists, computer and cell phone users, and other consumers do without them?

• Recognizing that California has closed most of its nuclear, coal, and gas power plants; that its net-zero, all-electricity mandates will soon double the state’s electricity needs; and that the state already imports one-third of its electricity from neighboring states – why aren’t you suing to fast-track WTE plants?

• Why aren’t you suing Governor Newsom, President Biden, VP Harris, your state legislature, and yourself for fraud and misrepresentation about green energy that isn’t clean, green, renewable, or sustainable?

It’s time to recognize that “progressive” policies, mandates, and lawsuits impose enormous costs on taxpayers, consumers, and our environment – while politicians feed citizens a steady diet of lies.

Top photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate, and human rights issues.