We Now Know How Exxon Secretly Fights Crackdowns on Plastic Pollution
Dharna Noor | July 2, 2021 | EARTHER
In a sting operation by Greenpeace UK, a top Exxon official admits Exxon's producing PFAS products and lobbying against anti-plastic laws.
A senior Exxon lobbyist was caught on tape admitting that the company has been running a behind-the-scenes campaign to combat regulation on plastics and PFAS, a video released Thursday shows. The tape is the second installment of an undercover investigation conducted by Unearthed, the investigative arm of Greenpeace UK, and it confirms environmentalists’ worst fears.
An Unearthed reporter posed as a recruiter on the search for lobbyists for a major client and managed to land Zoom calls with senior Exxon staffers, including its senior director of federal relations, Keith McCoy. In the May meeting, McCoy admitted that Exxon employed the same tactics it had previously used to derail climate policies in its effort to fend off “comprehensive regulations” on plastic.
“It’s just like on climate change, right,” he said in the video. “So when climate change came, well it’s here, but well when it started, you started to have conversations to say, ‘well, you can’t completely change the electric grid from coal and gas into wind and here’s why.’ It’s the same conversation: ‘You can’t ban plastics because here’s why,’ or ‘you can’t recycle or you know, legislate 100% recycling because here’s why.’”
With these tactics, McCoy said that Exxon has been fighting against legislative efforts to restrict the use of a group of chemical compounds collectively known as PFAS, which are highly toxic and don’t easily break down in the environment or the human body. Stunningly, he admitted that Exxon itself manufactures products based on PFAS, including a fire fighting foam, something the company had previously denied.