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You're doing great already. At a macro level, the battle is all but lost. A third of a billion tons of plastic is produced every year. Almost nobody cares outside a smallish fringe of society in very developed countries (i.e. us). And the hydrocarbons industry needs new things to do with the oil it can't burn. Also, plastic recycling is a red herring: it takes less energy to use virgin petroleum.
The two priorities IMO should be:
For the second one, my basic principles are:
Microplastics are going to be a major environmental and health challenge because the problem is just so intractable. But there's only so much an individual can do. Be a good consumer, be a good citizen and at the very least never forget to vote, and then just relax. It's bad enough as it is without adding pointless anxiety to it.
You seem to know this, I've heard that bottled water is the biggest culprit, responsible for like 90% of microplastic intake. Does the same go for other drinks in plastic bottles, like soda and juice?
The type of liquid should not make much difference. It's basically inescapable. At this point there's not much left to do except cross fingers.
Or drink tap water, which has far less of it and is obviously much better for the environment. To lose excess chlorine, just let the water stand overnight.
BUT POINTLESS ANXIETY IS WHAT I'M BEST AT. lol seriously though, thanks. Good perspective.
Recycling is not a red herring. Yes it uses more energy. Energy consumption is not the important metric. It uses fewer fossil fuels.
Energy consumption is the important metric because it almost certainly involves pollution. The supply of petroleum is essentially inexhaustible, certainly for the purpose of making plastic.
Then why reduce plastic use, if not to reduce oil consumption?
To reduce plastic pollution, of course.
Then energy consumption is again not the important metric. The amount of existing plastic is.
Going round in circles here.
It costs less, takes less energy, and therefore creates less climate-heating CO2 pollution, to make plastic out of virgin petroleum than it does to create plastic out of plastic. That should not be surprising: a thermoplastic is just petroleum with the molecules fixed into hard-to-break bonds. Of course it's going to be more efficient to start with the raw product.
We all agree that we should be using less plastic. But assuming an equal amount of plastic usage, and assuming that waste plastic is kept out of waterways in sealed landfills (plastic does not biodegrade so it will not produce methane), then it makes more sense from an environmental perspective to simply use virgin plastic.
Maybe that's uncomfortable but it's true. Plastic recycling is a mirage: it serves mainly to make consumers feel better about themselves. The closed loop just makes no sense due to the energy problem. That is not the case with glass, paper and especially aluminum, all of which are very efficiently recycled.
Read this. I've said enough here.
PS: added emphasis
Oh, sure, if you assume used plastic is tightly and cleanly tucked away after use then creating new plastic doesn't create more plastic, and energy becomes important.
But if we can't get recycling right, why do you think we would get storage right? In fact, there are plenty of stories that show we don't get storage right.
Recycling keeps the plastic out of the waste stream which otherwise just ends up in the environment.