It's almost as if regulations are needed because humans are incapable of doing the right thing to protect themselves. Fairly common thing I might add but you'd require a slightly larger government to do it and we can't have that either.

Which is how this ends up being a chicken-egg problem.

Are people driving plastic usage or is capitalism driving policies that drive people to use more plastic?

And if so, why is industry writing policy instead of the public, or agents that are supposed to work for the public's interest?

None of this ends until enough "regular people" coordinate to take power back from industry so that we operate like an actual democracy again. If you want to preserve an environment on Earth fit for human habitation, you have to get loud about... Campaign finance reform : P. And then realized that as boring as that sounds, that that will be when things actually would get violent and scary bc real power would be threatened.

I am not optimistic we'll even get that far. Our population probably will take some very severe hits in our lifetime though. I'll cut down on meat where I can, but I am mostly just enjoying the good times we have left.