eco lifestyle mechanics disabled

I have the eco lifestyle options disabled. No eco footprint enabled. However, the setting for it seems to be on even though it’s disabled when I checked in settings. It began when I got a notification that the world that my sims are living in became a green area. Which I found confusing as that gameplay is disabled in my save file. Once my sims step outside, they begin coughing and complain about pollution. But once again, that gameplay feature from Eco Lifestyle is disabled. This began to happen 1-2 days ago.