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This is why a carbon tax makes a lot of sense. Increase the cost of doing the wrong thing and let the market decide.

And a recycling tax. Carbon isn’t the only externality we care about.

I wonder what prevents them from bottling locally? It's cheaper and better for the environment. It feels like industries can always circumvent these one off laws. They should think of a whole framework of laws.

My understanding is that bottling and container manufacturing are fairly localized. Each large city will usually have a set of bottling plants, to reduce transportation cost.

I think it is easy to underestimate how optimized production and distribution are.

Budweiser brews their beer at 12 different regional anchor breweries to optimize distribution. At Ohio State, Natural Light is a local beer.

Orders of magnitude are important. Post consumer recycling involves extra transportation and thus greenhouse emissions. Except the energy savings can more than make up for this.