California has filed a lawsuit against oil giant ExxonMobil for allegedly engaging in a decades-long "campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis."
The announcement of the lawsuit was made by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. As per the complaint filed in the San Francisco County Superior Court, ExxonMobil "has been deceiving Californians for half a century through misleading public statements and slick marketing promising that recycling would address the ever-increasing amount of plastic waste ExxonMobil produces."
In addition, a coalition of nonprofit organizations and environmental groups -- Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay, and Baykeeper -- have filed a separate lawsuit against ExxonMobil, one of the largest petrochemical companies in the world, raising similar issues regarding its contribution to the global plastics pollution crisis.
The lawsuit comes two years after the California attorney general launched an investigation into the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries, examining their involvement in the ongoing global crisis of plastic waste and pollution.
During the probe, the Department of Justice issued investigative subpoenas to ExxonMobil and related plastics industry groups, uncovering "never-before-seen documents," that contributed to the lawsuit.
The complaint alleges that ExxonMobil had been involved in a decades-long campaign falsely promoting the idea among the public that recycling can mitigate the pollution resulting from plastic waste. The company is accused of violating state regulations as well as natural resources, causing water pollution, and engaging in false advertising and unfair competition.
"Today's lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil's decades-long deception, and we are asking the court to hold ExxonMobil fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis through its campaign of deception," Bonta said in a statement.
"Exxon Mobil knew that 95% of the plastic in the blue bin was going to be incinerated, go into the environment or go into a landfill," Bonta told NBC News. "They knew and they lied."
California also stated that Exxon had been promoting "advanced recycling" or chemical recycling recently as a breakthrough technology, while hiding facts regarding the technical limitations of recycling.
According to the California Department of Justice press release, the attorney general is seeking nuisance abatement, disgorgement (which would require the defendants to give up the profits gained through their illegal conduct), and civil penalties; and injunctive relief to both protect California's natural resources from further pollution and destruction, as well as to prevent ExxonMobil from making any further misleading statements about plastics recycling.
"We want them to put billions of dollars into an abatement fund," Bonta said.
In response, Exxon claimed that the state failed to set up a recycling system, Reuters reported. "Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills," said Lauren Kight, spokesperson for Exxon.
She further said that over the years, Exxon recycled more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials, keeping it out of landfills through advanced recycling.
On the other hand, environmental groups hailed the California attorney general's move.
Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a nationwide project seeking to end plastic pollution, stated that earlier lawsuits were filed against individual plastic products or companies that sell them, but for the first time a lawsuit targets production companies to hold them accountable.
