> government action has worked

I don't think that it did. And I don't care about what the humanity is consuming, as long as it doesn't pollute the world excessively.

Your rights end where my rights begin, etc.

What do you think explains why America has none of the top 10 polluting rivers? And only one of the top 1000? Despite the fact that we use massive amounts of plastic relative to most other countries, and that we are the headquarters of Coca-Cola.

It's laws. It's society. It's government. It's mobilization by citizens to get the government to regulate waste disposal -- to make improper disposal of waste illegal, and to fund the creation of easily-accessible environmentally-friendly waste disposal mechanisms.

Consuming soft drinks does not pollute the environment. Throwing bottles into rivers does. Your disdain for soft drinks has you mistaking these for the same thing.

Maybe. Or maybe you export your trash to other countries, to whomever takes it for the least amount of money, and they dump it into the river. We'll never know.

I'm not against soft drinks, again. I'm against plastic pollution, be it from plastic bottles or from textiles or packaging materials or whatever.

Producing plastic causes plastic pollution, no matter how it's disposed of.