California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, filed a lawsuit this past Monday on behalf of the state against ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest producers of a critical component of plastic—oil. The suit alleges that ExxonMobil deceived the public for decades about the sustainability and recyclability of plastics.
The lawsuit seeks an end to deceptive messaging, civil fines and penalties, disgorgement (fancy lawyer talk for taking away profits from illegal activity), and an abatement fund to help pay for the clean-up from ExxonMobil’s actions.
The 147-page complaint lays out a decades-long effort by one of the world’s largest producers of synthetic polymers (“essentially the building blocks used to make single-use plastic,” Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said in a press release), detailing a history of sustained greenwashing that the state traces back to the 1950s, when the plastics industry, including ExxonMobil, made a concerted effort to change consumer behavior to promote the sale and use of single-use plastic items. The suit includes examples of advertisements published in popular magazines like LIFE to promote disposable lifestyles. In another instance of Tweets never going away, the suit includes screenshots of social media greenwashing posts by ExxonMobil.
