I mean there's food-grade paraffin and beeswax wax can act as a polymer that addition of heat will reform. I can remember thinking as a kid, "why can't we just melt all this crap down?"

I guess call it indoctrination since reuse, conservation, recycling is something taught to kindergarteners, but even at face value the lifecycle obviously a cost -- trash management, elegance (due to litter, and bad packaging), the risks of petroleum mining/hydraulic fracturing, presumably greenhouse gas emissions, microplastic contamination, risks of sloppy chemical engineering/benzene contamination... all costs centered on crap that mostly sucks as a product to begin with... an idiotic matryoska doll of nested garbage.