Maryland should hold ExxonMobil responsible for plastic recycling lies | Guest Commentary
Dr. Michael Shank | The Baltimore Sun | November 1, 2024
Americans are being peddled misinformation about what happens to the plastic they buy and use in their daily lives, and Maryland taxpayers have an opportunity to fight back. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued ExxonMobil for the fossil fuel company’s pollution and track record of misinformation — particularly around the recyclability of Americans’ plastics.
If successful, the lawsuit will achieve two key things. First, it’ll get ExxonMobil to stop lying to the public about the recycling of plastics. Second, it’ll require ExxonMobil to provide new funding for an abatement fund to clean up some of the plastic pollution mess it helped create.
Maryland should follow suit. The abatement fund could add up to billions of dollars in California alone, and Maryland taxpayers sure could use that money to address the legacy of plastic pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Big Oil’s lies about plastic’s recyclability have impacted Marylanders just as they have Californians.
Less than 6% of the plastic in the United States is recycled — and that recycling rate has never reached the double digits. Yet for decades, companies like ExxonMobil have touted plastic recycling as a panacea for plastic pollution.
The truth is that plastic is an inherently non-recyclable material. An old aluminum can can be recycled into a new aluminum can. A cardboard box can be recycled into a new paper product. But it does not work that way with plastics. More than 16,000 chemicals are found in plastic. Many different plastic polymers are used, and different colors. The countless combinations of chemicals, polymers, and colors in every county and city make the sorting and recycling process financially untenable and technically unviable.
Over 99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels, which are sold by companies like ExxonMobil. The petrochemical industry’s goal over the years, on both the plastics and fossil fuel fronts, has been a nefarious one. If it could convince Americans of two things — that plastic was recyclable and that the fossil fuels used to produce it did not cause climate change — then its business model would work.
Thanks to Bonta’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil, the petrochemical industry is beginning to be held accountable for its plastics recycling lies. More attorneys general — including Maryland’s Anthony Brown — need to take similar legal action. Here’s why: This stuff is hurting you and your family.
We already know how fossil fuels are killing people and the planet when they’re burned in power plants, buildings, cars and more. Air pollution from fossil fuels kills approximately 5 million people annually. Add to that the devastating death and multibillion-dollar economic destruction that comes from a warming world’s increasingly extreme weather, like hurricanes Milton and Helene, as two of many examples.