It takes more energy and work to reuse glass than to just make new glass. Sand is abundant.
Recycled aluminum is much less energy intensive than new aluminum even with contaminants.
Recycled aluminum is much less energy intensive than new aluminum even with contaminants.
But transport and sorting (glass is hard and sharp) eat into that margin, so presort
I know that in some places they standardize the glass beer bottles to one or two types and strongly encourage people to bring the bottles back to the same location that they get beer from.
This results in a circular supply chain that sees bottles sterilized and reused many times. The number I heard was an average of 8 uses on average before a bottle gets a chip in it that renders it unsuitable for reuse, and then it is recycled.
It seems to me that this tight distribution loop is a key part of successful reuse and recycling endeavours.
In the US we throw everything into a truck and we expect recyclers to sort and re-melt a bunch of broken shards of assorted glass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation
In the NL, such 'reverse vending machines' are in every supermarket. They take PET soda bottles, soda cans (since 2023, €0.15 deposit per can), and a few (standardized) types of glass beer bottles.
The latter are often bought in crates, which (with empty bottles in them), are taken by the machine as a whole. On average, these beer bottles do ~20 roundtrips between supermarket & brewer. It simply goes in reverse direction along the same logistics chain supplying those supermarkets.
Non-deposit glass is collected in containers, seperate by color (clear/brown/green). Those have been around since early '80s or so. These days there's also containers for paper/cardboard, textiles, or even used frying oil/fat. Most supermarkets have smaller bins for batteries & small electronics.
Germany even has multi-use PET bottles.
From (extensive!) personal experience, these deposit schemes take a HUGE chunk out of beer/soda cans & bottles littered on roadsides, parks etc (some 75% reduction or so).
But it is cultural thing too. Most people in European countries care for their environment, energy use etc. Most US people, no so much. Other countries: it varies.
But the push for single-stream recycling has led many well intentioned people to believe that solution is good enough.