There's never been any particular reason to worry about plastics recycling though, because at the end of the day plastic starts off as oil in the ground, and it

There's never been any particular reason to worry about plastics recycling though, because at the end of the day plastic starts off as oil in the ground, and it's better if it ends up as oil in the ground (landfill). What we don't want is for it to end up in the ocean or top-level biosphere: which is not a problem recycling addresses, since it's the wrong part of the lifecycle chain and in the wrong area of responsibility. Recycling in general is oversold: it's a resource optimization strategy. It's most valuable for things with real limits on their production rate - i.e. plantation timber - or which are so expensive that recycling is just better (aluminum). But we have so much oil that...honestly who cares? The majority of the raw resources for plastics are burned rather then turned into useful products. If there's a good use of plastic waste, it's honestly burying it all in one easily reclaimable place so it could be thermally depolymerized as a useful input material later (i.e. when energy is cheap enough to make that viable).