I would shame the ones producing. Stuff like disposable vape should just not exists.

They are the one making a profit from this pollution ..

How is that possible? Companies are completely sociopathic. Whatever they say, they're only saying that to get people to buy their stuff.

Shame cannot work.

Replace "shame" with "regulate and fine" and I think we have a viable approach.

yeah, it seems people forgot the other two 'R's ... Reduce, Reuse.. then when you can't do that, recycle.

You mean shame the producers?

Shame is not a viable mechanism at scale (particularly across cultures). Particularly with the rise of extreme partisanship, shame lobbed at one group will be turned into an identity and used provactively (see e.g. "rolling coal").

you may be seeing a "guilt based society" trying to use a "shame based society" mores, here. we don't live in a shame based society, so it fails to do it's work pretty quickly ...

but then there's the rise in popularity of "just not giving a shit at all" and morality left the building long, long ago ...

see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/ImTheMainCharacter/

Under a capitalist system, you just need to force people to pay for the externalized cost so incentives align.

Arguably, any system of assessing and forcing people to pay for the assessed external costs is at odds with capitalism (it is arguably a form of central planning and interference with the free market).

Which is not to say that it isn't a good idea, and the minimum deviation necessary from capitalism to address externalities, but ideological capitalism/free-market purists tend to oppose it pretty strongly.

"Capitalism" does not mean "free market". It literally means that the profits go to investors (capital) instead of to the workers (labor). You can certainly have a capitalist system that does not have a free market, and you can certainly have a free market system that is not capitalism.