That's funny because over here in Australia it looks to be progressing well?

For us it's a yellow bin for recycling

Visy – what happens to your household recycling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXSmINKUOxg

Most Australian states have a 10c refund when you return a can or bottle:

https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/circular-economy-waste-reduction/reduction/container-refund/container-refund-types

Do you have this?

You can even then directly donate it to a charity of your choice: https://www.containersforchange.com.au/qld/donate-your-refund

On top of this if you use https://oceanhero.today/ for searching the money they make from ads goes towards paying people in poor countries to collect plastic

Australia wide we're slowly phasing out single use plastics:

https://www.marineconservation.org.au/which-australian-states-are-banning-single-use-plastics/

That's already reducing the amount of plastic by millions of tons

There's also smaller things like:

Our new cards are made from 100% recycled plastic*, with 64% collected from coastal communities by Parley for the Oceans™.

https://www.bankaust.com.au/card

Recycling centers try and then often give up and just landfill plastic

Sounds like defeatist mentality to me, your councils/states should be doing better