The biggest mistake was forcing the reliance onto consumers, which only impacts the people who give a shit and allows narcissists to externalize their costs onto everyone else, rather than taxing product packaging based on it's lack of sustainability and cost of disposal.

The whole concept of modern recycling was literally created by oil companies to peddle the plastics that created an additional revenue stream from their waste/byproducts; the OG masters of externalising their costs onto others.