California's attorney general sued ExxonMobil on Monday, alleging the company has engaged in a decades-long "deceptive campaign" to mislead consumers into believing recycling is a viable solution to plastic waste.
The lawsuit, filed in California state court in San Francisco, alleges that ExxonMobil promoted recycling as a "magic bullet for plastic waste," even though the company knew that plastic would be difficult to eradicate and that certain recycling methods could not process much of the waste it generated.
It is further alleged that ExxonMobil violated state regulations regarding, among other things, water pollution and deceptive marketing.
"ExxonMobil promoted and significantly increased the production of single-use plastics while making false promises that its plastics were sustainable and recyclable and false promises that recycling would clean up the resulting plastic waste," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference.
He added: "The company has perpetuated sham solutions, manipulated the public and lied to consumers. ... It is time for ExxonMobil to be held accountable."
ExxonMobil said in a statement responding to the lawsuit that "advanced recycling" is effective and that the company has diverted more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste from landfills using the method. The term refers to chemical recycling: a process that breaks down plastic into its basic chemical components for potential reuse.
"For decades, California officials have known their recycling system is ineffective. They failed to take action, and now they are trying to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem," ExxonMobil said.
The lawsuit represents a new avenue in the legal battle to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for pollution and their aggressive marketing practices. In other lawsuits, state attorneys general and environmental groups have sued oil and gas giants over carbon pollution and its role in climate change and extreme weather disasters.
The new lawsuit, which the attorney general's office calls the first of its kind, focuses on the life cycle of plastic and the potential dangers of microplastics.
The state is seeking a jury trial and is seeking to force ExxonMobil to forfeit some of its profits, along with other civil penalties. Bonta said he hopes to establish an abatement fund to clean up pollution.
Environmental groups welcomed the announcement.
"This is the big one. I hope this opens the floodgates," said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a nationwide project that aims to stop plastic pollution.
Enck said previous lawsuits have targeted individual plastic products or companies that sell them, but "this is the first time there's been an attempt to hold the manufacturing companies accountable."
She added that she is skeptical of claims about the benefits of chemical recycling, as the process often converts plastic into transportation fuel.
The lawsuit alleges that ExxonMobil is the world's largest producer of polymers used to make disposable plastics, which are derived from fossil fuels.
It is alleged that ExxonMobil and its predecessors, Exxon and Mobil, have promoted single-use plastics for decades through trade associations, advertising campaigns and other marketing initiatives. At one point, they even used Boy Scouts to sell plastic kitchen and garbage bags as a fundraiser.
The industry groups encouraged Americans to adopt a "throwaway lifestyle" and downplayed public concerns about the environmental risks of plastics, the lawsuit alleges. By 1973, industry leaders were calling those concerned about plastic waste "enemies," according to internal communications from the Society of the Plastics Industry (now the Plastics Industry Association) cited in the lawsuit.
As public concern grew, ExxonMobil and its predecessors pushed mechanical recycling as a solution, despite internal industry warnings that it was not a permanent or viable solution. One example cited in the lawsuit: In 1988, Exxon, Mobil and other petrochemical groups formed the Council for Solid Waste Solutions, which took out a 12-page ad in Time magazine urging recycling.
In the U.S., the recycling rate for plastic has never been higher than 9%, the lawsuit says.
It also calls microplastic pollution a 'crisis'.
Scientists have found microplastics in fresh snowfall in Antarctica, near the summit of Everest and in the Mariana Trench, evidence of how ubiquitous this type of pollution has become.
Microplastics could have harmful effects on both the environment and human health, some scientists say. Early studies suggest they can trigger inflammatory responses and cell damage in the human body.
A study published earlier this year found that people with microplastics and nanoplastics in the plaque lining a major blood vessel in the neck have a higher risk of heart attack, stroke or death.
However, more research is needed to understand the risks of microplastics to human health.
Leehi Yona, an assistant professor of environmental and climate law at Cornell University, said the lawsuit opens a second front in the fight to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
"We've seen quite a few lawsuits based on the evidence of what these companies knew about climate change and how they misled the public," Yona said. (California is one of several states and municipalities that have sued the companies over their contributions to climate change.)
But the new lawsuit expands that approach to claims about plastic, she said.
"I think these lawsuits are incredibly important, not only for their legal merits, but also to draw attention to the misrepresentations by some of these companies, in the same way that lawsuits against the tobacco industry were about the way they misrepresented the links between smoking and lung cancer," Yona said.
Several nonprofits, including the Sierra Club, the Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay and Baykeeper, filed a separate lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Monday, also in San Francisco. The attorney general's office and the nonprofits are coordinating their legal efforts, and both lawsuits make similar claims.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com