In September 2024, the State of California sued ExxonMobil, accusing one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies of “misleading the public on plastic’s recyclability and polluting California’s environment and communities.”
Upon filing the suit, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, “For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible. ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.”
Plastic requires anywhere from 20 to 500 or more years to degrade, so concerns about plastic waste are warranted. As of 2017 (the most recent year for which data is available), some 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste had been generated worldwide. In the United States, a mere 9 percent of plastic was recycled.
The lawsuit raises broader questions concerning what other items might not be truly recyclable — or are simply not being recycled.
“As a predictor of environmental goodness,
‘recyclability’ is about as reliable as a coin toss.”
“Just because an item is ‘recyclable’ does not mean that it will actually get recycled,” says David Allaway, senior policy analyst for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and coauthor of a comprehensive 2020 meta-analysis of studies on packaging recycling. This is what we know about some other materials.
Paper and Glass: American domestic reclamation of paper and glass continues, although much of our sorted recyclables are now being dumped into landfills or incinerators because there aren’t enough facilities to recycle it all.
Aluminum: This metal is often lauded by industry sources as “infinitely recyclable.”
“Aluminum is one of the most recycled — and recyclable — materials in use today,” claims the Aluminum Association.
So, is aluminum a more sustainable choice? The answer is complex.
Aluminum production has a large carbon footprint. The metal is made from bauxite, which is strip-mined and then smelted, requiring massive amounts of water, heat, and energy. Smelting furnaces generate greenhouse gases, and producing an aluminum can is estimated to release twice as much carbon dioxide into the environment as making a plastic bottle.
Because aluminum doesn’t rust, it can be remelted and reused. Industry sources claim that recycling it requires only 5 percent of the energy needed to produce the metal — but that still bears an environmental price tag.
And then there’s human behavior. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, only about half of all aluminum beverage cans were recycled in 2018, the most recent year for which there is data.
“As a predictor of environmental goodness, ‘recyclability’ is about as reliable as a coin toss,” Allaway says. “Using fewer materials in the first place typically results in far greater environmental benefits than recycling or using ‘recyclable’ materials.”
This article originally appeared as “The Trouble With Recycling” in the July/August 2025 issue of Experience Life.
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