Is it just the cost/benefit ratio that you have to consider? How about the quality of being realistic? Tell me, and in the context of the previous responses--how realistic is it that North America will be able to carry out and enforce its agenda in the Ganges?

A good cost/benefit analysis would have to include this. And yes, I personally think that the developed world can drive change in other countries, otherwise I wouldn't donate to an NGO that attempts to do just that (not for plastics though).

One problem is that what I'm saying could easily be framed as "white people telling brown people what to do", and then everyone would drop it like a hot potato because it smells like colonialism. So it's politically safer to stay in my lane and buy a MacBook pouch made from recycled PET bottles instead.

(What I agree on is that the developed world should not export its trash or otherwise sabotage foreign countries.)

The problem isn't just "white people telling brown people what to do", though that's certainly one aspect of it. The more important issue, though, is that there's no way for developed countries to significantly "drive change" in other countries without undermining the sovereignty of the latter through some kind of bribery or debt trap or predatory trade deal.