How Fossil Fuels Are Killing People and Planet With Plastics and Petrol

By Dr. Michael Shank

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.

We also know that fossil fuels-turned-plastic are harming people and the planet at equally negative rates. And it’s an industry-wide problem with society-wide impacts. In September, a new study showed that 3,601 of the known chemicals in food packaging have been discovered in the human body, increasing Americans’ risk of heart attack, stroke and early death.

That’s just the tip of the plastic iceberg. Plastic has been discovered in human brains, where there’s been a 50% increase in the last eight years. Plastic has been found in our heart tissue. Plastic has even been found in human placentas, breast milk and the stools of newborn babies — in other words, our children are being born pre-polluted.

If the direct human impacts aren’t motivating enough, plastics are using up the globe’s remaining carbon budget as the industry plans to triple plastic production in the next few decades; plastics are rapidly polluting the ocean and waterways, imperiling marine life; and chemical pollution, of which plastics are of particular concern, has already passed the safe limit for humanity to coexist, threatening ecosystems everywhere.

A 2022 survey found that 94% of Maryland voters are concerned about single-use plastic products, and 77% are even more concerned once they learn about the dismal U.S. plastics recycling rate. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown can do something about this.

It’s time for Attorney General Brown and others to take a close look at the California lawsuit and take similar action. Not only is it warranted — due to the petrochemical and plastics industries’ long history of misinformation regarding their products’ devastating footprint — but Americans’ health, and the health of our planet, also depend on it.

Michael Shank is managing director of the nonprofit Beyond Plastics and an adjunct professor for New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. He lives in Washington, D.C. This article first ran in the Baltimore Sun.