Companies will pass costs onto consumers anyway, so best to make them all bear the same costs and be on a level playing field. No point targeting consumers directly unless it’s greenwashing.
My city banned plastic bags a year ago. I’m still using ones from 2-3 years ago. The bags that replaced them are advertised as more “reusable” but use like 5-10x more plastic per bag and I doubt I’m going to even get double the longevity. Really feels like they did it to benefit the fossil fuel merchants of death, and not reduce plastic at all… especially considering everything else is still wrapped in single use plastic.
Don’t forget the hundreds of billions that global capitalism funneled into China by “outsourcing” absolutely everything they possibly could over the last 30-40 years — devaluing developed world labour markets and environmental regulations, and winding back the clock to an unregulated slave labour market is what made it so attractive.