Perhaps we have to consider why single use plastic is appealing in the first place. The culture of use once and throw away might have started with plastic but didn't stop there.
Corp is gonna corp.
The fact is there is an externality that exists to be taken advantage of, and it can try to be corrected in a few ways. Punishing the corp with taxes, regs etc is only one way
I'm sure most of us here could find something unethical about their employer if we looked deep enough. That action might even be a product of globalization or the society and the only way for the corporation to exist is to do that unethical thing.
Its on the government to protect the people and the land. If plastic is an issue they should force the producers to do something about it. They would then need to increase the cost of the product, which could force people to use cheaper alternatives.
I do not believe any of the people that I saw generating social pressure around recycling in my childhood worked for plati-corps... But they did have their personal identity and social/political in-group signaling tightly coupled to being _perceived_ as caring about the environment.
No need for a historical lens though. The same dynamics are at play now.
The more frequently someone uses in-group and out-group signaling language to short-cut critical thinking in discourse, the more likely it is that they're perpetuating some form of "propaganda."
This really is the fault of the corps. Recycling _could_ be practical, but corps want to throw it out and make more, because that's cheaper.
And if the article wants to talk about lying, it really needs to include the lying that US waste disposal corps are doing about what can go in their recycling bins. 3/4 of what current waste disposal says is recyclable goes straight to the landfill.