I had a family member who used to educate people on recycling. Growing up it was a major fact that styrofoam was a forever material that would never biodegrade and couldn't be recycled. Today there are methods to recycle styrofoam (albeit just like all recycling it takes people and resources to take the effort to do it, which is the real barrier). I don't think being reckless with our future is a good idea. But history is full of past norms being changed by new scientific discoveries.