Attorney General
"Every week, we consume the equivalent of a credit cards worth of plastic through the water we drink, the food we eat, and the air we breathe,” he said, citing a 2019 study for the World Wide Fund For Nature environmental group.
Bonta will consider whether petrochemical companies violated the law with what he called their “historic and ongoing efforts to deceive the public.” Bonta said
The company said it is the first to have "commercial-scale advanced recycling technology" at a major facility to convert used plastic into material that can be used to make new plastic.
Initiatives the industry group said it supports include requiring all plastic packaging in the
But Bonta said the industry appears to have engaged in “greenwashing” for decades by leading consumers to believe that plastics were environmentally friendly — largely because they can be recycled.
That marketing effort made “people comfortable to consume more and purchase more plastic,” he said. “And that is really the heart of the deception that we’re going to investigate.”
Companies may have violated laws barring unfair competition, deceptive business practices, or making “greenwashing” illegal, Bonta said.
A civil lawsuit could potentially seek fines or damages, but Bonta said his main goal is a legal order or a settlement requiring companies to clean up plastic waste, make plastics manufacturing changes and promote “non-deceptive ways of talking about plastics.”
“We’re really looking at the underlying issue of non-recyclability, essentially, of plastics, and that is a major problem,” Bonta said. “And we’re investigating whether that was fueled by a decades-old campaign of deception.”
There is no timeline for the completion of the investigation, but Bonta said it is proceeding “with a level of urgency.”
Bonta's move comes amid growing awareness of the pervasiveness of discarded plastics and the role of “microplastic” waste in the food chain.
Scientists are still studying the extent and human harm from tiny bits of broken-down plastic, some so small that they are invisible to the naked eye.
Like Bonta, the scientists have said that recycling won’t solve the problem. Most plastic cannot be recycled and overall recycling rates have never exceeded 9%, said Bonta. The rest is incinerated, put into landfills or escapes into the environment.
The
Petrochemical companies have ramped up plastics production as the use of fossil fuels is gradually replaced by renewable energy, he said. About 1.5 million tons of plastic produced globally on an annual basis in the 1950s. The amount is now more than 300 million tons annually.
The
"We have to stop producing plastic junk,” the group said in a statement.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission., source