While consumer efforts are good, it's important to remember and focus on industrial waste, which is a far greater problem: https://stanfordmag.org/contents/industrial-versus-consumer-...
I think worrying about things like single-use shopping bags and compostable straws is great from a "keep pollution out of the environment" perspective, but I doubt they make a huge difference from a landfill usage perspective.
https://www.epa.gov/smm/sustainable-management-construction-...
> 600 million tons of C&D debris were generated in the United States in 2018, which is more than twice the amount of generated municipal solid waste.
> Demolition represents more than 90 percent of total C&D debris generation, while construction represents less than 10 percent.
> Just over 455 million tons of C&D debris were directed to next use and just under 145 million tons were sent to landfills.
At one point I estimated that's about a hundred plastic straws worth of ethylene per second. There's not a lot of individual recycling that can be done about that.
Anyway, at the risk of rehashing a very old argument, OP presumably means that if you want to reduce the effects (landfill, increased consumption of plastics etc) then the best place to apply your effort is in industrial contexts.
It's good to reduce any waste but it's rational to apply your finite efforts where they'll give the best return.
The vast majority of people don't have control over industrial waste. Of course I can vote for someone who says they will but that doesn't require focus only an action at most once a year.
I believe the OP is using whataboutism to allow himself to be selfish. "Why recycle when celebrities fly on private jets" or to make it more obvious "Why should I be good if another person isn't"
I think of it as the socialist slaveowner problem: "You can't call me a bad socialist, I'll release my slaves when everybody releases their slaves. Compared to world slavery, I'm just a drop in the bucket (I own barely 5% of them.) Actually, your obsession with me instead of the real problem says a lot about you. So convenient for you to ignore the 95% and indulge your petty, childish bigotry against equestrians."
There's no ethical consumption under capitalism!