A Louisiana state board is expected to vote Wednesday on millions in tax breaks for an ExxonMobil advanced recycling facility in Baton Rouge that the company acknowledges won’t create any new permanent jobs, Floodlight reports.
The proposed $120 million facility comes amid controversy over the performance of the company’s initiative.
A lawsuit filed last month by the California Attorney General lawsuit claims ExxonMobil’s development of advanced recycling facilities is a “public relations stunt without any prospect of meaningfully reducing the amounts of plastic waste or virgin plastic ExxonMobil produces.”
ExxonMobil started a pilot advanced recycling facility at its refinery in Baytown, Texas in 2022, and named seven possible locations for another site, including Baton Rouge. The proposal for Baton Rouge comprises four projects, including plastics recycling and manufacturing isopropyl alcohol to be used in chip manufacturing.
Whether or not the advanced recycling facility has been operational seems to be under deliberation. A spokesperson says that, to date, the Texas facility has processed 60 million pounds of plastics into “usable raw materials.”
But a joint investigation by Inside Climate News and CBS News reported in August that more than a year and a half after Houston began collecting consumer plastics for its Baytown plant, it has not started processing those plastics.
ExxonMobil says the California lawsuit is an attempt to deflect from the state’s own failures on recycling.
“They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills,” a company spokesperson said in an email to Floodlight. “The first step would be to acknowledge what their counterparts across the U.S. know: Advanced recycling works.”
