LOS ANGELES — When California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, accusing the oil giant of misleading the general public concerning the effectiveness of plastic recycling, lots of the allegations concerned the corporate's marketing of a process called “advanced recycling.”
In recent years — as long-standing efforts to recycle plastics have failed — Exxon Mobil has touted advanced recycling as a breakthrough technology that may turn the tide on the plastics crisis. Company officials and petrochemical trade organizations have used the phrase in radio spots, television interviews, and quite a lot of internet marketing materials. In a blog post from 2021Karen McKee, president of product solutions at Exxon Mobil, painted a very promising picture.
“Imagine your discarded yogurt containers being turned into medical equipment for your next doctor’s appointment and then into the dashboard of your next fuel-efficient car.”
But despite his seemingly environmentally friendly name, that of the Attorney General suit denounced advanced recycling as a “PR stunt” that mainly involves overheating plastics to convert them into fuel. At Exxon Mobil's only Advanced Recycling facility in Baytown, Texas, only 8% of plastic is converted into virgin material, while the remaining 92% is converted into fuel that’s later burned.
Bonta's lawsuit seeks a court order prohibiting the corporate from calling the practice “advanced recycling,” arguing that the overwhelming majority of plastic is destroyed. Many environmentalists and policy experts praised the legal motion as a crucial step toward ending greenwashing by Exxon Mobil – the world's largest maker of single-use plastic polymers.
“There's nothing 'advanced' about it,” said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics. “It's a deception. It has been a deception for half a century. If they had been able to recycle plastic polymer back into virgin resin, they would have already done so. But they use the same technology we have had since the Industrial Revolution. It’s a coke oven, a blast furnace.”
As more research has been carried out into the boundaries of plastic recycling, the revelations have shaken the general public's confidence about what to place of their blue kerbside recycling bins.
“The public perception of what is recyclable in terms of plastic does not reflect reality,” said Daniel Coffee, a UCLA researcher who studied plastic waste in Los Angeles County. “Recycling has long been considered the perfect solution for single-use plastics. And the clearest answer to the question of why is that the public was told so. This was communicated to them largely through an industry-backed disinformation campaign.”
Advanced recycling, also called chemical recycling, is an umbrella term that typically involves heating or dissolving plastic waste to supply fuel, chemicals and waxes – a few of which may be used to make latest plastic. According to a 2023 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, essentially the most common techniques generate only one to 14% of plastic waste. Bonta said Exxon Mobil has used mostly recycled plastic for fuel production while increasing production of virgin plastic.
“You essentially suck in oil, turn it into plastic, and then have to burn more oil to turn that plastic back into oil, which you then burn,” Coffee said.
Bonta claims that Exxon Mobil has held a patent for this technology since 1978 and that the corporate incorrectly rebranded it as “new” and “advanced.” The practice was tested within the Nineteen Nineties but was not continued beyond the testing phase. It recently resurfaced after the corporate learned that the term “advanced recycling” was gaining traction with the general public at a time of accelerating concern about increasing amounts of plastic waste.
In December 2022, the launch of a complicated recycling program was announced. In an interview with a Houston television station in 2023, an Exxon Mobil representative promoted the Baytown facility.
“When [customers] When they buy an off-the-shelf plastic product, they want to know that it is sustainable,” said the Exxon Mobil employee. “This is a big game changer for the industry – but I would say for society in general.”
In response to Bonta's lawsuit, Exxon Mobil said its Baytown plant processed 60 million pounds of plastic into “usable raw materials” that would otherwise end up in landfills. Experts say that number pales in comparison to the company's annual production capacity of 31.9 billion pounds.
According to Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit that works to combat plastic pollution, the Baytown plant is one of about five plants nationwide that break down plastic by exposing it to high heat.
California has enacted some of the strictest laws in the country to reduce single-use plastics. Perhaps the most consequential regulation, SB 54, requires the state to sell 25% less single-use plastic packaging and food. It also prohibits waste incineration and similar practices from being counted as recycling.
In 2021, around 5.4 million tons of plastic waste was sent to landfills in California the latest state waste disposal data. That same year, more than 625,000 tons of trash were sent to so-called “conversion plants,” where the trash is incinerated or burned in the absence of oxygen (a process called pyrolysis).
According to CalRecycle, the state agency that oversees waste management, California does not track data on how much of that waste burned was plastic. The state also does not provide any detailed information about how much plastic waste is exported to other countries and how it is processed.
“California’s vision of a waste-free future focuses on reducing waste, reusing and targeting products that flow back into the system for efficient collection and reprocessing into new products,” said Maria West, a spokesperson for CalRecycle.
If the state is serious about its promise to eliminate waste, environmentalists say the state must phase out single-use plastics.
“There’s nothing you can do with plastic other than landfill it or burn it,” Williams said. “You can try to repurpose it, but you will never compete with virgin material. And even then you have to chop it up, turn it into pellets and feed it into a blast furnace. How good is that for the climate? How is this better than coal?”
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