To be fair, some states have passed legislation regarding single-use plastics, and it's not as though measures in the EU didn't provoke whinging and pushback ... China, and Japan, among others, are somewhere between the US and EU when it comes to regs at least.
But, these are difficult measures to "sell" - the effects of this kind of legislation are immediate, impacting consumers, companies, etc. ... and "hit pocketbooks", in particular. The benefits are nebulous*, relate to some "ill-defined future", and don't seem to have tangible impacts today (except possibly negative) on ability to make a living / continue living.
Unfortunately, these factors in our current system(s) underlie a rigidity (resistance to changes) that bodes extremely poorly, IMO, for adaptations required to face the absolute sh1tstorm of challenges converging on societies like the water from "Lake Conemaugh" after the "South Fork Dam" break (i.e., when what was formerly protective focused problems avoided in former years, delivering decades worth of suffering in an ~hour-sized package).**
This isn't intended to suggest pessimism or apathy, but, rather, how much energy - voting, getting involved in politics, etc. - will be required from the (generally younger) citizens of many countries to break through the momentum of "legacy systems" to create some of the changes necessary.
The current indications aren't great when orange clown*** is still dominating the news many days...
* To the vast majority of sheltered "modern people" - who don't fish, say, or look at rain droplets with magnification, or have other occasions for encountering the really massive problem that's been developing for decades now
** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood
*** And a whole circus and set of sideshows built around other grifters
Edit: one other point - my current favored "solution" is simply burning the plastic (most can be IIRC) in cement kilns and the like. Unsurprisingly, I think, to anyone with some understanding of "polymer chemistry", plastic isn't so "inert" when exposed to the harsh physical environment over the course of decades. In some sense, worse, one of the properties that makes plastic so useful, also means that most biological systems don't have enzymatic / other machinery for dealing with / processing plastic. There has been more burning of plastic, in recent years - it's not "great", but, it's actually still about the least harmful option for waste streams that can't be (practically) reused, recycled, etc. ... (yet). There have been some reasonably good articles on plastics recycling in some of the more mainstream sources that discuss burning (esp. for cement production / in "cement kilns")... I'd provide but kinda rushed (sorry - I need to stop writing long-ish comments when time is tighter), but, web searches should likely turn those up easily enough.