I'm sure there is some kind of name for this.
Trying to shame people into using less never solves this problem. It just means there is more available for the shameless. The solution as are either to regulate the commons, or find a better way to meet our needs.
How does it happen that everyone, on average, recycles or uses less energy?
In general, by making non recycling or energy use more expensive. This can come from regulation, taxes, social pressure. Technical innovation can also sidestep whole issues by using less energy/materials and/or producing more. Maybe there are a few other paths.
Those things actually make a difference. Focus on them.
They have always pushed "blaming the consumer for trash", and disparaged "producer responsibility" and "plastic recycling" (except in blaming the consumer for not recycling, but that's just a variant of blaming them for trash).
It's weird to now see people pointing to the same organisations that opposed these things, and claiming they campaigned for them.
In countries/states with functional governments that aren't owned by fossil fuels, plastic recycling has happened as just one of a suite of measures and has always been successful. Every academic study of it has agreed it's the best thing for the economy and planet.
In others states, the ones that are in thrall to big oil, it didn't really happen, and then the people who don't want it to happen appear to have recently started claiming "hah, we (i.e. the big evil oil corps) wanted you to recycle, so now you shouldn't do it, that'll teach us".
This is the kind of reverse psychology that works really well on toddlers.
you’re sorely missing what my point could be if you think it’s nihilism / hah fine to be wasteful, another spin on the individualist solution making I attacked in my comment
> Despite this, three former top officials, who have never spoken publicly before, said the industry promoted recycling as a way to beat back a growing tide of antipathy toward plastic.
And in doing so they get to repeat their "plastic recycling doesn't work" rhetoric.
As soon as you force the producers to pay for disposal and let them figure out how best to do it, recycling suddenly, magically becomes the cheapest option.
https://www.wastedive.com/news/2021-state-extended-producer-...
> Recycling, the former officials told NPR and Frontline, became a way to preempt the bans and sell more plastic
> "The feeling was the plastics industry was under fire, we got to do what it takes to take the heat off, because we want to continue to make plastic products," Thomas says.
Solutions or failures happen in other contexts. Gates does some real work in those.
The whole "I must recycle all my plastic bags or the planet will die" mentality is, to me, a weird form of delusion of grandeur. Seeing past that can be both freeing and depressing :)