Oil companies (which are also plastic companies) have worked hard for decades to make the public think that used plastic products would be recycled if we handed them in, knowing this was not true, so that we would buy and discard plastic without hesitation.

Most of what we hand in goes into landfill because recycling it is not feasible.

Did they know, decades ago, that plastic products would damage wild animals and ecosystems?

Perhaps not. (It would be interesting to investigate what they knew about this and when.) In any case, we know it now. We must reduce drastically the amount of plastic waste that does not in fact get recycled, so we do not leave our planet full of toxin dispensers.