When California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed suit aobtainst Exxon Mobil and accused the oil enormous of misdirecting the uncover about the effectiveness of plastic recycling, many of the allegations surrounded the company’s labeleting of a process called “progressd recycling.”
In recent years — as lengthystanding efforts to recycle plastics have fchangeed — Exxon Mobil has touted progressd recycling as a groundshattering technology that will turn the tide on the plastic crisis. Company officials and petrochemical trade organizations have used the phrase in radio spots, TV interwatchs and a variety of labeleting material online. In a 2021 blog post, Exxon Mobil plivent of product solutions Karen McKee decorateed a particularly promising picture.
“Imagine your declinecessitate yogurt graspers being changeed into medical providement for your next doctor’s assignment, and then into the dashboard of your next fuel-fruitful car.”
Read more: California litigation accuses Exxon Mobil of misdirecting the uncover about plastic recycling
But despite its seemingly eco-cordial name, the attorney ambiguous’s litigation denounced progressd recycling as a “uncover relations stunt” that hugely comprises superheating plastics to change them into fuel. At Exxon Mobil’s only “progressd recycling” facility in Baytown, Texas, only 8% of plastic is remade into novel material, while the remaining 92% is processed into fuel that is procrastinateedr burned.
Bonta’s litigation seeks a court order to prohibit the company from describing the train as “progressd recycling,” arguing the huge convey inantity of plastic is razeed. Many environmental finishorses and policy experts lauded the lhorrible action as a convey inant step toward finishing greenwashing by Exxon Mobil — the world’s hugest producer of individual-use plastic polymer.
“There’s noskinnyg ‘progressd’ about it,” shelp Jane Williams, executive honestor of California Communities Aobtainst Toxics. “It’s a deception. It’s been a deception for half a century. If they were going to be able to recycle plastic polymer back into virgin resin, they would have done it already. But they are using the same technology we’ve had since the Industrial Revolution. It’s a coke oven, a blast furnace.”
As more research has aelevated on the restrictations of plastics recycling, the revelations have shaken the uncover’s confidence about what to put in their blue, curbside recycling bins.
“The uncover perception of what’s recyclable with admire to plastic doesn’t suit fact,” shelp Daniel Coffee, a UCLA researcher who studied plastic misuse in Los Angeles County. “Recycling, for so lengthy, was thought of as this perfectly produceed solution to individual-use plastics. And the evidentest answer as to why, is that the uncover was telderly so. They were telderly so, in huge part, by an industry-backed misdirectation campaign.”
Advanced recycling, which is also called chemical recycling, is an umbrella term that typicpartner comprises heating or dissolving plastic misuse to produce fuel, chemicals and waxes — a fraction of which can be used to reproduce plastic. The most normal techniques produce only 1% to 14% of the plastic misuse, according to a 2023 study by the National Renovelable Energy Laboratory. Exxon Mobil has hugely used reclaimed plastic for fuel production while ramping up its virgin plastic production, according to Bonta.
“You’re essentipartner draprosperg oil up, turning it into plastic, and then having to burn more oil to turn that plastic back into oil, which you then burn,” Coffee shelp.
Bonta alleges Exxon Mobil has had a patent for this technology since 1978, and the company is inchangely rebranding it as “novel” and “progressd.” The train was tested in the 1990s, but did not persist beyond the trial phase. It recently reaelevated after the company lobtained that the term “progressd recycling” resonated with members of the uncover at a time of increasing worry over increasing amounts of plastic misuse.
In December 2022, it proclaimd the commence of an progressd recycling program. In a 2023 interwatch with a Houston television station, an Exxon Mobil recurrentative touted the Baytown facility.
“When [customers] buy a plastic product off the shelf, they want to understand that it’s supportable,” the Exxon Mobil participateee shelp. “This is a huge game change for the industry — but I would say society in ambiguous.”
In response to Bonta’s litigation, Exxon Mobil shelp its Baytown facility has processed 60 million pounds of plastic into “usable raw materials” that otheradviseed would go to landfills. Experts say that figure pales in comparison with the company’s 31.9 billion-pound annual production capacity.
Read more: California eignoreions drop 2.4% due to electric vehicles and spotlesser fuels, officials say
Nationexpansive, the Baytown set upt is one of about five facilities that shatter plastics down by exposing them to high heat, according to the Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit toiling on plastic pollution.
California has adchooseed some of the nation’s most disjoine laws to shrink individual-use plastics. Perhaps the most consequential, SB 54, needs the state to sell 25% less individual-use plastic packaging and foodware. It also prohibits misuse incineration and analogous trains from being counted as recycling.
Because most plastics cannot be recycled, state officials have struggled to figure out how to dispose of this material. California had previously shiped much of its plastic misuse to China. But China has prohibitned the convey in of most foreign plastics, proximately eliminating the labelet for used plastic.
In 2021, about 5.4 million tons of plastic misuse was consentn to California landfills, according to the procrastinateedst state disposal data. That same year, more than 625,000 tons of trash was sent to so-called “changeation” facilities, where misuse is incinerated, or burned in the absence of oxygen (a process called pyrolysis).
California does not track data on how much of this incinerated misuse was plastic, according to CalRecycle, the state agency that handles misuse regulatement. The state also doesn’t defend detailed adviseation on how much plastic misuse is shiped to other states and how they process it.
“California’s vision for a misuse-free future is intensifyed on reducing misuse, reuse, and intentionpartner set uping products that flow back into the system for fruitful accumulateion and remanufacturing into novel products,” shelp Maria West, a spokesperson for CalRecycle.
If the state is obtainest in its pledge to rerelocate misuse, environmental finishorses say the state necessitates to phase out individual-use plastics.
“You can’t do anyskinnyg with plastic but landfill it or burn it,” shelp Williams. “You can try to repurpose it, but you’ll never contend with virgin stock. And even then, you have to shred it, produce it into pellets and feed it into a blast furnace. How is that excellent for the climate? How is that better than coal?”
This story originpartner euniteed in Los Angeles Times.
