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We could make a huge dent in this problem by simply reusing glass containers for things that are appropriate. Start with beer and soda. Move on to canned beans, soup, etc. Setup programs to make returning the containers easy.

We use 80,000,000,000 aluminum cans, 35,000,000,000 plastic bottles, and 16,000,000,000 glass bottles a year in the US.

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Indeed, the energy cost of machine-washing glass bottles is surely an order of magnitude less than that of recycling the broken glass into new bottles. However, I don't think you can replicate that with aluminium cans. They preserve their contents better than glass bottles do, so glass bottles can't necessarily replace them. The seal of aluminium cans also breaks when they're opened, so you can't directly wash and reuse the cans.

I have seen aluminum bottles (for beer). Heavier than cans but lighter than glass.

We could streamline this process and increase participation by having local governments provide a bin that they collect in a big truck every week…

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