California filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil Monday saying the oil and gas giant deceived the public about the recyclability of plastic.

The first-of-its-kind lawsuit accuses the Texas-based company of duping the state’s residents for 50 years.

“Plastics are everywhere, from the deepest parts of our oceans, the highest peaks on earth, and even in our bodies, causing irreversible damage — in ways known and unknown — to our environment and potentially our health,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.

Filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, the complaint alleges the multinational corporation has spent decades issuing “misleading public statements and slick marketing promising that recycling would address the ever-increasing amount of plastic waste ExxonMobil produces.”

The lawsuit seeks to force the company to set up an abatement fund and would charge civil penalties for the plastic pollution it has caused in California. 

Spectrum News has reached out to ExxonMobil for comment.

The report comes as the state is grappling with the unintended consequences of a single-use plastic bag ban it enacted a decade ago. The ban replaced thin-film bags with thicker bags that were intended to be reused but rarely are. Plastic waste in the state has instead increased 50%.

About 430 million tons of plastic is produced annually, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, about a third of which is single-use plastic. According to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Review, just 5-6% of plastics are recycled each year. 

ExxonMobil is one of the largest producers of the polymers that are used to make single-use plastics. The polymers are made from fossil fuels other companies then mold into plastic.

The California lawsuit said ExxonMobil falsely promoted all plastics as recyclable, “when in fact the vast majority of plastic products are not and likely cannot be recycled, either technically or economically.”