Last week, California's attorney general (AG) sued ExxonMobil over its contributions to the issue of plastic waste and what the AG claims are deceptive practices and marketing about the effectiveness of plastic recycling — and advanced recycling in particular. The lawsuit comes after a two-year investigation in which the AG subpoenaed internal communications at ExxonMobil. There's a lot in the lawsuit, including some fairly spurious claims, but the basic thrust of the state’s claim is that 1) the issue of plastic waste constitutes a public nuisance, and 2) ExxonMobil contributed to that public nuisance in a knowing way by selling plastics and marketing recycling efforts in a deceptive way that would help it sell more plastics. A few things jump out at me from the suit:
- California says that mass balance with free attribution is misleading. Much of California's suit rests on the assertion that ExxonMobil knowingly overstated the extent to which its actions could address the issue of plastic waste. Mass balance provides the perfect fodder for this claim: As the filing says, “Mass balance [with free allocation] divorces the need for end products to reflect the actual amount of physical waste plastic content that the products contain.” The suit alleges that mass balance allows companies to claim that packaging is made from 100% recycled plastic when only 1% of the physical product is recycled and that this gap constitutes deceptive marketing. California also rejected the industry’s claim that mass balancing is necessary because tracking content would be too difficult otherwise, citing internal documents showing ExxonMobil’s internal tracking of waste content. California wants ExxonMobil to knock it off: One of the proposed relief measures is banning it from using the term “certified circular polymers,” among others.
- California is aiming to lead the charge against greenwashing. Much of the lawsuit focuses on how ExxonMobil has chosen to market its work around advanced recycling. There are a lot of claims in the suit, but one that stands out is a tweet from ExxonMobil Baytown Area that states “Thanks to our revolutionary advanced recycling technology, we can give any plastic a new life.” This tweet pretty clearly states that ExxonMobil can recycle any type of plastic, which, in my view, just isn't true, at least not in any meaningful sense (PET and PVC?are certainly not suitable for their process, for example). I doubt whoever wrote that tweet was specifically targeting Californians, but it doesn’t matter — digital marketing doesn’t respect borders. California’s greenwashing laws effectively apply to anyone marketing in the U.S., even if they're not necessarily targeting Californians specifically — other companies should take notice and begin to think about compliance.
- Microplastics are a big part of the damage and claims for redress in the lawsuit. ?There's a big gap between how the chemicals industry and the broader public, including regulators — and apparently the California AG — view the issue of microplastics. For the chemicals industry, this is a distinct and far-less important issue than recycling, but for most people, all the plastic concerns are tied up together — and indeed, the lawsuit links microplastics to the broader issue of plastic waste mismanagement. Microplastics mostly come from a handful of sources: clothes and tires (which are shed mainly during use not at end of life), intentionally added microplastics in personal care products, and leakage from production. There's really not a huge link between plastic waste and microplastics: You can imagine a world where we have achieved a 100% recycling rate, and there's still a fair amount of microplastics entering the environment from tires and clothes alone. Still, the suit alleges that because ExxonMobil encouraged the use of plastics, which it knew contributed to microplastic pollution on some level, that it engaged in deceptive business practices.
While some form of the lawsuit was probably inevitable, the industry has weakened its own case by choosing to move forward with — and lean so heavily in its messaging on — free-attribution mass balancing. If free-attribution mass balancing is the only way to make plastic pyrolysis work, then maybe the industry should rethink plastic pyrolysis! The perception risks because of mass balance in particular are well known: In 2021, I wrote “Ultimately, this ‘[mass balance with] free attribution’ is not based on the physical reality of the product and could be considered deceptive.” It was not difficult to predict the technique that uncouples the physical volume of recycled material from the claims of recycled content would get companies in trouble for greenwashing. That’s hardly the industry’s only problem: Much of the damage caused by plastic waste predates advanced recycling and doesn't have anything to do with mass balancing. But it was not necessary for the chemicals industry to hand regulators and state AGs their strongest weapon in the suit against advanced recycling. The suit will take a long time to play out, and ExxonMobil may prevail in the end — but chemicals companies need to be prepared to scale their recycling efforts in absence of mass balancing. Even if this suit fails, it's still likely to increase the negative associations with mass balancing — and those associations are going to shape public sentiment and ultimately the regulatory environment in which these companies will soon find themselves.
For more on #sustainable #innovation,?check out the Lux Research Blog and the Innovation Matters podcast. The opinions expressed in the Innovation Matters newsletter are my own and do not reflect the views of Lux Research.
