If the scale winds up being that eliminating my microwave usage and throwing out plastic containers from my house entirely reduces my plastic consumption 1 %, then I wasted a whole bunch of time and money, and distracted myself from trying to find ways that _would_ reduce plastic consumption (say, filtration on municipal water - but who knows).

Single source municipal recycling is typically a process of sorting and selling certain kinds of waste to other people, with little processing happening locally. This process is way more wasteful than people would like to think, with changing and opaque rules about what is acceptable and what will wind up just being thrown away. I'd give that as an example of a policy that promotes a certain amount of effort to make people FEEL like they are making a difference, vs actually making a significant difference.