Instead people are told there is a solution for recycling. They feel like the problem of plastic waste is solved. So they don’t make any efforts to reduce or reuse their waste.
There's not really anything in the way of grass-roots waste reduction that scales. I'm not really offered a choice between product and product-without-plastic. My trash is filled every week with all manner of plastic I didn't ask for. I would be over the moon if I could go to the grocery store and all the plastic was aluminum, paper, and glass— (bonus if I could return the containers) but that decision is made by the bean counters.
I'd throw whatever little weight I had behind legislation to make it so but at least at the state level it would never pass. The single-use plastic bag ban was met with a reaction at the same level as if the people for it killed everyone's dog.
Eventually, when decommissioned the area gets covered with dirt.
How is that kinda solved, do you mean like "I don't live near a landfill so I assume that air full of microplastics isn't the air I'm breathing and that water isn't the water I consume"? That sort of solved? Because beyond that I ain't seeing it.
The microplastics in your air and water probably aren't coming from landfills, in fact the solution to that is very likely to be more landfills. Those plastics come from coastal countries lacking good waste management who dump plastic into rivers and oceans, and the solution is painfully boring— municipal waste management.