The fraud that occurs with recycling is hardly a simpleton's morality tale for the masses. AFAICT it's not even discussed.
People are "against recycling" becuase it's stupid or inconvenient, or others are "pro recycling" for "the earth". But recycling is a fraud, largely, as I mentioned - it's not supposed to supplant the reduction and re-use of materials, yet is has. This is because of plastics industry lobbying and marketing.
No one talks about Reduction or Reuse. Now it's "recyclable". you throw it in a green bin and no one asks about it after that. Plastic bags were made a little thicker and euphemistically labelled "reusable". Study disposable single use trash marketed as reusable.
And while many products are optimized for cost, they don’t market them as “cheaply sourced ingredients.”
Plastics have a bad rap. They don’t cause big societal problems, relative to the societal attention (Eg plastic straws).
People want simple, binary stories about a fight against evil — but the world is complex and actually pretty good.