It's a measure put in place to make us feel better about it and then shift the responsibility and blame onto the citizenry. It's not about about actually reducing plastic waste, you can only do that by using less plastic.

Its like helmet laws for cyclists. They exist, not to prevent head injuries but to shift responsibility for the injury from the State (infrastructure) and the driver to the cyclist. All of the best cycling places don't have helmet laws as they massively undermine the uptake of cycling. They have infrastructure.

Jay walking is another example. People used to be allowed to walk in the street and cars were given the responsibility to stay under 10mph and not run down people. The auto industry lobbied for jaywalking laws so that the liabilities of their machine would be born by the pedestrian, not the owner of the machine.

Plastic pollution is therefore our fault because we didn't recycle hard enough. When in reality it is our fault because all we really want is to feel good about it, not fix it.