Recycling almost always involves regulation. The people who don't like regulation are particularly annoyed by popular regulations like recycling. So there's b

Recycling almost always involves regulation. The people who don't like regulation are particularly annoyed by popular regulations like recycling. So there's been a decades long propaganda campaign against recycling from people connected to libertarianism and funded by fossil fuel producers (the main input source for plastic currently). A few years back they switched from taking money from fossil fuels to publicly say recycling doesn't work (falling back to plastic recycling doesn't work when challenged on the absurdity of that broad statement) to saying that fossil fuels pushed recycling while secretly claiming it wouldn't work and that's why we should not recycle. If we stopped using plastic entirely then that would be bad for fossil fuels, but that's not going to happen in most cases, so plastic without recycling is best for fossil fuels. Notably, when any kind of plastic ban seems likely to be implemented say on single use items, the libertarians that have fought recycling for decades suddenly start claiming it works. https://reason.com/2022/05/31/environmentalists-ban-single-use-plastics/ https://reason.com/2022/05/31/environmentalists-ban-single-u... "These Environmentalists Want To Ban Single-Use Plastics Because Recycling Them 'Will Never Work' And yet infinitely recyclable plastics are on the horizon.” This propaganda worked particularly well in the US and people in the US are only vaguely aware that other countries exist, and wild tales of them having better recycling, healthcare, EVs or gun policy are obviously just myths as the US is the best of all possible worlds.