> Empirically, most people weren’t willing to do this stuff

People had to be taught to throw things away. Seriously, just look at vintage 1950s advertisements introducing the concept of "disposables."[0] This was commercial and government interests aligned on what to do about all the production capacity and factories from the war economy now that the war had ended. The conclusion was a total transformation of our society centered around consumption

I think it's important to bring some historical context and remember that what needs to happen here isn't so much "learning" as it is "unlearning"

[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vintage-ads-plastic_n_5cdb176...

I remember a scene in the show "Mad Men" where they just flick out their blanket to scatter all trash from a picnic and then leave. I thought it had to be satire but I asked an older coworker and he said it was pretty accurate to how things were when he was a kid.

Ironically, plastic bags were invented to be reusable.

The term "disposable" might be a post-war thing (The Google Ngram views for "disposable" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=disposable&yea... and "disposables" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=disposables&ye... are pretty neat.)

However, the concept is older. One-use paper Dixie Cups started around 1910, replacing the shared cup.

"How unsanitary!" you might think of the old system.

Sure, but the Dixie Cup Company sure did promote that hard. "Just think of the luxury—a new cup filled with pure water all for a cent" - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ctx.2010.9.1.73