MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The attorney general of California has filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging it lied to the American public for decades about whether plastic could be recycled.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The state's top prosecutor filed the lawsuit yesterday. His suit also calls out Exxon's attempt to blame the public for a plastic crisis the prosecutor says the oil company created. This suit cites a lot of our reporting here at NPR, along with PBS "Frontline."
MARTIN: NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan has done a lot of this reporting. She's been following this case, and she is with us now. Good morning, Laura.
LAURA SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: What specifically is the suit alleging ExxonMobil has done?
SULLIVAN: Well, the suit says that the company violated laws around false advertising and creating an unfair competition and a public nuisance. It also cites them actually for pollution. But the premise of that is that ExxonMobil, along with the oil industry as a whole, knew as far back as the 1970s that plastic recycling was never going to work. I mean, it's expensive. It's difficult. It's toxic. But the suit says that the company set out on this ambitious plan to deceive consumers about recycling so that they would, you know, buy more plastic. And so here's Attorney General Rob Bonta.
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ROB BONTA: The company has propped up sham solutions, manipulated the public and lied to consumers. It's time ExxonMobil pays the price for its deceit.
MARTIN: What sort of evidence or examples does the suit include?
SULLIVAN: The attorney general's staff unearthed dozens of internal documents between the oil company and industry executives, where they appear to acknowledge to each other that recycling plastic doesn't work but then turned around and told the public the opposite. Here at NPR, we've seen some of these same memos as part of our own investigative work. In fact, the lawsuit cites NPR and "Frontline" six times.
But one of the point of - points of contention that people will probably recognize is the chasing-arrows recycling symbol that was stamped onto the bottom of all plastic for decades. And the suit alleges that Exxon and other companies manipulated states into requiring that stamp, even though the industry knew that it was misleading.
MARTIN: How has ExxonMobil responded?
SULLIVAN: The company said in a statement that recycling works and that California is just trying to blame them because the state can't get its recycling act together. You know, they said they have processed 60 million pounds of plastic so far.
MARTIN: Sixty million pounds - OK, so they're sticking with the original message.
SULLIVAN: Exactly.
MARTIN: But is the state seeking damages?
SULLIVAN: It's interesting. They're not in the traditional sense. The state wants Exxon to pay billions of dollars to remedy the problem. It's - there's a little bit of cleanup. But mostly, they say they want Exxon to reeducate the public. Here's - Attorney General Bonta said it this way.
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BONTA: To have ExxonMobil stop lying, stop deceiving the public, stop manipulating consumers, stop gaslighting us and tell the truth.
SULLIVAN: Bonta says he wants Exxon to explain to the public that the vast majority of all the plastic that they're holding in their hands is not actually recyclable. It's just trash.
MARTIN: That is NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan. Laura, thank you.
SULLIVAN: Thanks so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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