It appears they knew that recycling plastic consumes more resources than it saves when they claimed the opposite. "Reduce" is still the most effective means of, well, reducing waste. "Recycling" now appears to be little more than a marketing tool to avoid being more heavily regulated.
Yeah, this is pretty messed up stuff. The more we learn about plastics, the worse it gets -- they are very hard to recycle and plastic companies liie about it as this video points out, many plastics have endocrine-disrupting chemicals in them that are bad for reproductive systems (likely one of the reasons why sperm counts worldwide are plummeting, though pesticides and how many people are overweight are also sure to be parts of it), making them is bad for the environment, and more... I like things made from plastic as much as anyone but as a substance it's seriously troubling in ways that should be MUCH more regulated than they are.
The potential substitutes for plastic which biodegrade much faster and naturally are promising, but more expensive simply due to building that infrastructure in the first place. Like everything else that involves earth oil, it was a mistaken path born of shortsightedness.
We should probably go with cardboard again for storing our video games, and straight up wood and rubber for housing our computer components. Heck, my mom carries around a glass straw in her purse these days and just cleans it when she gets home.
The manufacturing and disposal are the biggest issues, and until that's taken care of, things like outlawing straws are meaningless token gestures. If you owe $2000 a month on your home and someone offers to give you a dollar a month, they aren't really helping you. In fact, an offer like that is basically an insult and should reasonably be treated as such, in both cases.