Erm, what? On the topic of recycling, your two "sides" seem wholly compatible - you've just ascribed different group identity caricatures. Which says little about people, and is mostly a reflection of how the political parties work to divide us.
Disagreeing about whether to outsource a problem to China or deal with it locally is ultimately a separate topic.
I believe these articles are being driven by a backlog of stuff at recycling centers because gasp the abstraction where you just put your stuff in a separate bin and your consumption-waste is magically absolved has been shattered. We've already been inundated with a message telling individuals to "use less" for decades, so any effect has basically already been realized (meanwhile every other advertising message and economic signal continues to say "use more").
One is suggesting avoiding nearly all plastics, while they other has studies showing that replacing plastic bags with organic cotton bags is 20,000x worse for the planet and will probably give you salmonella.
One complains that recycling is too hard, because you have all the different boxes and people only do it to punish themselves out of some puritan impulse and the other thinks it's too easy and people do it to make themselves feel better about their consumption.
These are not the same thing, they only seem to agree that recycling is bad, but for opposite reasons.
The answer almost certainly involves more (genuine) recycling but that seems to be the only thing people are united against, so it's not likely to end well.
The dichotomies are better seen as thesis-antithesis, with the goal of synthesis. It's only the political machine that emphasizes and exacerbates each half-idea, pits them against one another, to ultimately foster commercial expedience winning out.
> The answer almost certainly involves more (genuine) recycling
The converse here is retuning the economy to produce less stuff in general, as well as dismantling the economic treadmill that causes us to value "convenience" above all else. Which even fewer people want to hear.
- Give up the convenience of modern life, permanently, for everyone (don't allow any more industrialization than already exists) - Drastically reduce population
You get one side represented by this article, that thinks recycling is a plot by the plastics industry to green wash their products. And that it's shocking that we export plastic to China where it is burnt or landfilled.
Then on the other side you get fossil fuel sponsored libertarians saying that recycling is a big scam perpetrated by the hippies, who do it to feel good but it's actually better economically and environmentally to landfill or incinerate it and keep using oil and gas to make new plastics.
Both narratives seem to turn on the big "recycling is a hoax" twist, which is obviously a big clickbait success but then go in opposite directions with it. I'm not really sure it's possible for both to be true at the same time.
Note that most mainstream sources, the EPA etc. suggest recycling plastic is better environmentally and economically than the other disposal alternatives, though not as good as reducing usage in the first place. Though, there will likely be times when plastic is overall the better option if you take everything into consideration and dispose of it properly.
It's not clear to me why reduction advocates would start by attacking recycling? Does that really make strategic sense? Is this yet another false flag by the devious plastic industry? Or would it simply not get any traction if it just said something boring like "we shouldn't use too much unnecessary plastic when there are better alternatives"?