California’s attorney general is investigating oil and gas
companies for allegedly deceiving the public that most plastic can be
recycled, citing NPR and PBS Frontline’s investigation of the industry.
Accusing the country’s largest oil and gas companies of “a half-century campaign of deception,” California’s attorney general opened an investigation Thursday into the possible role the companies played promoting the idea that plastics could be recycled, in an effort to manipulate the public to buy more of it.
Attorney General Rob Bonta said the fossil fuel industry benefited financially from the industry’s misleading statements which he said go back decades. Bonta has so far subpoenaed ExxonMobil seeking information and documents.
“For more than half a century, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis,” Bonta said. “The truth is: The vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled.”
The announcement cited NPR and the PBS series Frontline’s 2020 investigation
into the oil and gas industry which uncovered documents showing top
officials knew that recycling plastic was unlikely to work but spent
tens of millions of dollars telling the public the opposite. Starting in
the 1980s, the industry launched dozens of ads, nonprofits, and
campaigns touting the benefits of recycling plastic – and placing the
responsibility on consumers – even as their own documents warned that
recycling was “infeasible” and that there was “serious doubt” that
plastic recycling “can ever be made viable on an economic basis,” the
investigation found. …