market won't regulate itself. that's established. EDIT: no way to "vote" with my wallet

Or apartments aren't mandated to have recycling. Or how oil corporations controlled anti-climate change propaganda, as well as Republicans. Or how corporations forced us to use oil to get to our jobs because there really was no public transportation alternative (particularly in America).

That makes this meme stupid, because consumers didn't have much control over big money buying everything or basically requiring the use of specific materials.

So while I again agree everyone is at fault

no, only those in power and making profits are to blame, not the people trapped in their wealth extraction system with no choice but to participate or die.

All consumers need to do is commit mass suicide /s

I mean, I think it would be cool if I could go into a store and buy a flash drive that wasn't surrounded by a mountain of plastic and other resources. Or replace that with just about everything else. Although we're at another wealth inequality problem in general (I can go vegan tomorrow, move to a commune where everything was made of hemp, and it will still probably take 100 of my lifetimes to offset the carbon footprint of Elon or Taylor Swift over the next week, or maybe even just hour) I do often think about the very nature of our system now is that goods sold are often going to come with at a bare minimum equal parts waste to product.

Consumers have the very real ability to vote and protest for changes but the people don't care and the politicians know it would be unpopular so they wouldn't do it.

Plastic and recycling have nothing to do with climate change though