Waste plastic and pollution, possible myth.

And you hit the nail on the head there.

You just can't trust industry to do the right thing if left to their own devices. They are 100% profit driven and as long as what they're doing is making them money, they have no incentive to stop. The only way to make them stop is to hurt them financially and there are really only two ways to do that:

1. The customers refuse to buy their products unless they do the right thing, but there are two problems with this. One is that the customers need to know something wrong is going on in the first place and many companies are extremely good at hiding that in some way or another. If they're found out and are forced to do something about it, they'll only do just enough to shut up the detractors and no more. If that means only making it look like they've fixed the problem* and then marketing the hell out of it, then that's all they'll do. The other is price, as you mentioned. Most people don't care how the sausage is made. As long as they don't get sick from eating it, they just want the cheapest one they can get that still looks, smells and tastes like sausage.

2. Governments get involved and regulate the problem areas. Yes, it costs citizens money, but they're the only ones who have the resources to keep checking up on industry to make sure they're in compliance with the rules. Small consumer interest groups have nowhere near the kind of clout a government agency can provide (if properly funded and run). The best they can hope for without political help is to influence consumers to be smart about how they do business. The government's job is to do what's best for everyone, both now and in the long run, even if that makes them slightly unpopular, because average citizens will mainly think about themselves and their own immediate futures, not the wellbeing of the country or the entire world 50 years down the road.

That said, the biggest mistake we've made in modern democracy is handing power over to academic career politicians who couldn't possibly make a living if they had to do anything else. When that's who's ruling the world, you can be certain they'll do whatever they can to keep their seats. They live from election cycle to election cycle and they'll do and say whatever they have to to make sure they can pay their bills for the next four years, so you can't really count on them to do the right thing any more than you can trust industry. That's why we always need to do both things.

We need our governments to legislate for the greater good, but we also need the average person to be aware of what's going on, so politicians always feel their chairs wobbling beneath them if they're not doing what they're supposed to come election time.


*Or making the public believe the problem doesn't exist and there's really nothing to worry about. When we know for a fact the tobacco and sugar industries (just to name a few) have been doing this for decades, it's weird to me that some people still have a hard time believing the oil industry would do the same thing.