NEW YORK, Sept 23 (Reuters) - California has filed a lawsuit against oil giant Exxon Mobil over its alleged role in global plastic waste pollution, its attorney general announced on Monday.
Speaking at an event during Climate Week in New York City, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state sued Exxon after concluding a nearly two-year investigation that showed Exxon was deliberately misleading the public about the limitations of recycling.
The investigation parallels California's previous probes into the oil industry's alleged efforts to mislead the public about climate change.
Bonta specifically seeks information on Exxon's promotion of its 'advanced recycling' technology, which uses pyrolysis to convert hard-to-recycle plastic into fuel. He noted that the technology's slow progress indicated ongoing deception by Exxon.
'Today's lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil's decades-long deception, and we are asking the court to hold ExxonMobil fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis through its campaign of deception,' Bonta stated.
He aims to end the company's 'deceptive practices' and seeks to secure an abatement fund and civil penalties for the harm caused by plastics pollution in California.
Exxon denies the allegations of misleading the public regarding plastics recycling and climate change. The company is the world's largest producer of resins used for single-use plastics, according to a report last year by the Minderoo Foundation.
California's lawsuit comes ahead of a final round of global plastic treaty negotiations set to occur in Busan, South Korea, later this year. In those discussions, countries are divided over whether the treaty should impose caps on plastic production, a position opposed by Exxon and the global petrochemical industry. The United States recently expressed support for a treaty aimed at reducing global plastic production.