IMHO, the problem is that the incentives are not aligned towards improvements but merely to follow the letter of the law without considering its spirit. For example, there's a ban on plastic straws here in California, and the workaround Starbucks found for cold drinks was to provide a sippy plastic lid. So the plastic is still very much there (and never mind that the cup itself is still made of plastic). Paper containers aren't necessarily much better either if they're plastic coated (for example pringles canisters are basically unrecyclable even though they are "made with recyclable materials").

By targeting specific low hanging fruits, legislation ensures that the industry finds workarounds that continue to be cheap and environment-unfriendly, but in ways that have too complex details for an average joe to understand _why_ something that is labeled environment-friendly isn't quite so in practice. It's the environment equivalent of overprescribing antibiotics (shortsighted legislations) only to find years later you've inadvertently created superbugs (industries that produce things whose unrecyclability is extremely misleading and resilient to the level of understanding legislators have).