Big oil’s big deception: That plastics are recyclable

Plastic pollution is everywhere. We eat it. We drink it.  We breathe it. It is on the summit of Mount Everest and at the bottom of the oceans. Not only is it in human breast milk, but, according to one study, the average person now ingests as much as a credit card’s worth of plastic (5 grams) every week.

New research by the Center for Climate Integrity reveals that the plastics industry knew this plastic waste crisis was coming. And so petrochemical manufacturers worked hard to persuade the public that we could recycle our way out of the problem. 

Behind the scenes, however, they were admitting all along that such efforts were “virtually hopeless.” For more than 40 years, they knew that plastic recycling is not technically or economically feasible at scale. More than 90 percent of all plastic has ended up in landfills, ecosystems, or incinerators. Yet the generation of plastic, and the consequent pollution, continues to boom, to our collective peril.

When industries sell harmful products and deceive the public, there are consequences. Just ask the tobacco or opioid companies. New York Attorney General Letitia James has already brought a major case against Pepsi for pollution caused by its plastic products. 

But the plastic pollution crisis has been caused by more than one brand. It has been created and boosted by the plastics industry, which misled the public about the recyclability of its products.

Twenty petrochemical companies generate more than half of all the world’s single-use plastics. They include major oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil, the world’s leading producer of single-use plastic waste.

Plastics are a product made from fossil fuels. As the world moves away from fossil fuels in a race to avert climate catastrophe, journalists have shined a light on how oil companies promote recycling, in part because plastics are their “Plan B.”

The new research builds on that evidence.  It shows the fullest picture to date of a decades-long effort by Big Oil and the plastics industry to sell the fairy tale of plastics recycling. Since the 1970s, these companies, their trade associations, and their front groups promoted recycling “solutions” using misleading advertising, inaccurate educational materials, performative investments, and commitments that they knew they were unlikely to meet.

Internal documents reveal that the industry knew by 1986, for example, that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of.” In 1994, an Exxon employee warned staffers at the American Plastics Council that they did not “want paper floating around” saying they could not meet recycling goals, since the issue was “highly sensitive politically.” These compelling admissions and many more are grounds for a thorough investigation.

Exxon, Chevron, and other key players in the plastics industry are already facing a flood of state and local lawsuits that seek to make them pay for misleading the public about climate change. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who last year filed the biggest climate lawsuit against oil majors to date, has launched an investigation to “examine the fossil fuel industry’s role in creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis — and what laws, if any, have been broken in the process.” As part of that investigation, his office issued subpoenas to Exxon. 

Evidence of Big Oil’s plastic recycling deception demands action. It seems clear that the plastics industry has exploited our shared desire to live sustainably, polluted our air and water, and contaminated our bodies by churning out hundreds of millions of tons of plastic, even while they apparently knew better. It is time for attorneys general and other officials to hold them accountable.

Brian Frosh was attorney general of Maryland from 2015 to 2023.