Exxon’s “advanced recycling” claims land in court
Exxon’s “advanced recycling” claims land in court
California’s landmark lawsuit presents evidence that the oil giant’s “advanced recycling” campaigns — which promise to solve the plastic waste crisis — are deceptive.
“Imagine a future where plastic is not wasted but instead remade over and over into the things that keep our food fresher, our families safer, and our planet cleaner,” a narrator reads as used plastic bottles and packaging magically become new again before the viewer’s eyes.
That utopian mirage is brought to you by America’s Plastic Makers, a campaign of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the major trade organization for the plastics industry in the United States. It’s part of a multi-million-dollar ad blitz to market “advanced recycling” (also known as chemical recycling) — a supposedly new and revolutionary technology which, according to ACC member Exxon, will finally allow companies to convert plastic waste into new plastic products.
Yet according to a lawsuit filed last week by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, plastic remade from plastic waste will constitute less than 1% of Exxon’s total plastic production capacity by the end of 2026 — even under the company’s vision for the future.
California’s lawsuit is the first to seek to hold a fossil fuel company liable for deceiving the public about the viability of plastics recycling. (One year earlier, the state sued Exxon and other oil giants for “misrepresenting and concealing” the damage its fossil fuel products would cause to the climate.)
The complaint argues that Exxon, the biggest single-use plastic polymer producer in the world, has long presented recycling as an alternative to reducing plastic production, “despite knowing full well that the infrastructure, market, and technology for plastic recycling, particularly for single-use plastics, are woefully inadequate for the volume of plastic ExxonMobil produces.”
A 40-page section of the case is dedicated to “advanced recycling,” a process of breaking down plastic using heat, mostly to create fuel and chemicals rather than new plastics. Leveraging new evidence from the attorney general’s years-long investigation, as well as journalistic, academic, and nonprofit reports, California’s complaint argues that Exxon is knowingly marketing unsubstantiated claims about “advanced recycling” as a solution to plastic waste — all while continuing to ramp up its production of fossil fuel-based plastics.
Here are just some of Exxon’s “advanced recycling” claims and of California’s proof that those claims are deceptive:
Making new plastic from plastic waste
Exxon claims its “advanced recycling” technology can convert “difficult to recycle plastics, plastics that would otherwise end up in a landfill or incineration,” and produce “high quality raw materials that can then be used to make new plastic products.”
“If we have the ability to take plastic waste and turn it into new products, that’s what we’re trying to do,” said Ray Mastroleo, Exxon’s global market development manager for advanced recycling, during an interview with CBS and Inside Climate News.
California looked further into Exxon’s Baytown Complex in Texas — the company’s only operating “advanced recycling” facility, where a preexisting oil refinery processing unit uses heat to break down plastic waste. Just 8 percent of the plastic processed there through advanced recycling becomes new plastics, while the rest is primarily turned into combustible fuels. At least 99.9 percent of the yearly amount of plastic produced at Baytown comes from virgin feedstocks, according to internal documents and data obtained by the attorney general.
New, scalable technologies
Exxon says that these technologies are “new” and “advanced.” But California maintains that “the truth is ExxonMobil’s ‘advanced recycling’ program is less like a recycling program, and more like a waste disposal or destruction program akin to the incineration solutions advocated by ExxonMobil in the past.”
The oil giant patented the technology in 1978 and tested it in the 1990s, but ended the process after the trial phase. It was brought back under the name of “advanced recycling” as concerns over plastic pollution bubbled up in recent years, leading the company to the conclusion that “the public perception benefits received will be invaluable… even if it proves not to be financially sustainable,” according to internal communications quoted in the complaint but not yet made public.
Exxon also claims that its technology is “commercial and scalable,” and that it is “pursuing ambitions to scale this technology around the world.”
But despite hundreds of millions in public funds being diverted towards these projects in the U.S., no “advanced recycling” facility has successfully recycled plastic at a commercial scale. Exxon says that by the end of 2026 it will process 500,000 tonnes of plastic waste per year into new plastics — but the company’s total plastic production capacity was 14.5 million tonnes in 2023. Based on California’s calculations and existing data, new plastic made from plastic waste will constitute only 0.23 to 0.27 percent of Exxon’s total plastic production capacity.
The company boasts that “advanced recycling” will allow it to process mixed and post-consumer plastic that traditional recycling methods can’t handle, describing “discarded yogurt containers being transformed into medical equipment for your next doctor’s appointment, and then into the dashboard of your next fuel efficient car.”
But that claim may not be based in reality. Exxon has internally identified sorting through mixed plastics as the technology’s “Biggest Challenge.” The complaint references a not-yet-public document allegedly showing that while editing a press release for “advanced recycling” partner Cyclyx, a company that “works with industry participants to increase plastic recyclability,” Exxon’s Vice-President for Sustainability successfully suggested “aspirational” language about the company’s ability to process mixed post-consumer plastic waste.
Circular, certifiable, and climate-friendly
In a 1994 meeting with APC staffers, Exxon Chemical Vice President Irwin Levowitz admitted that pyrolysis — or using high temperatures to break down plastics — was a “fundamentally uneconomical process.” But nearly three decades later, Exxon announced its intention to build a “Cyclyx Circularity Center” with other partner companies to sort and process plastic waste through both mechanical and “advanced” recycling. While publicly claiming that the Center would “leverage new technologies to analyze plastics based on their composition and sort them according to customer specifications for their highest and best reuse,” the company internally referred to Cyclyx as “loss making,” worried about the “plan to break even,” and delayed the start-up of the Center, which now has an expected start-up date of 2025, according to California’s complaint.
In an attempt to make the technology financially viable for the company, Exxon is marketing “certified circular polymers” to consumers and other manufacturers at a premium, advertising new plastic products as recycled plastic. But by California’s assessment, “they may contain very little or no recycled plastic at all.”
Exxon is also misleading consumers about the emissions-reduction benefits of “advanced recycling,” California alleges. The company states on its website that “waste plastic has a relatively low carbon footprint compared to fossil-based feedstock” — but life cycle assessments by plastic producers cited in the complaint show that’s not true. One report commissioned by the Consumer Goods Forum found that claims of lower emissions depend on the hypothetical incineration of virgin plastics at their end of life — and that when compared to producing and then landfilling virgin plastics, “advanced recycling” emissions are 20 percent higher. (In California, only about one percent of municipal waste is incinerated, according to the complaint.)
“Stop gaslighting us”
In response to the lawsuit, an Exxon spokesperson told news outlets that “advanced recycling works. To date, we’ve processed more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials, keeping it out of landfills.” As NPR pointed out, California handles 10 billion pounds of plastic waste each year.
During a press conference, Bonta said one major outcome of the suit would be “to have ExxonMobil stop lying, stop deceiving the public, stop manipulating consumers, stop gaslighting us and tell the truth.”
California is aiming to force Exxon to stop putting out “deceptive public statements,” including the use of terms like “advanced recycling,” “chemical recycling,” “circular,” “certified circular polymers,” and “recyclable” to describe its plastic operations. Exxon would likely challenge that remedy with First Amendment claims, as it has used in attempts to fight lawsuits seeking accountability for climate deception, alleging the suits are in violation of the company’s free speech.
California also seeks to make Exxon pay into a fund to help abate the ongoing harm plastics are causing in the state. The state is seeking another abatement fund for harms related to climate change in the separate climate deception lawsuit it filed last year against Exxon and other oil majors.
“There’s been a lot of major verdicts against manufacturers of products that have turned out to be dangerous in one way or another. But I don’t know of another instance where a company like Exxon has faced two mega billion-dollar [lawsuits],” said Pat Parenteau, an environmental law professor and senior fellow at Vermont Law School. “Even Exxon can’t withstand the kinds of claims that are being brought against them across the country.”