PET bottles are widely recycled, at something like 90% in Norway and 80% in Japan. Versus 25-30% in the US. The issue in the US is literally that people just throw them in the trash or on the side of the road, outside of the six states that have a deposit.
Statista link, with some of the rough figures corroborated by Wikipedia:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166550/plastic-bottle-r...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling
The issue is the lack of will, and opposition, to actually put them in a place where the materials can be recycled...and to make it cheaper (through tax incentives) to recycle the material than to use new plastic.
Those glass bottles would end up in the trash or in the road too, as things stand. It's where I already see them go most of the time. Moving from a recycling-friendly state to a southern state has been infuriating in that regard.