The problem with glass and recycling

We had friends for dinner and the evening and enjoyed these two bottles of wine. Today I'm facing the sad reality that these bottles will probably end up in a landfill. What a waste! What a horrible contribution to our environmental crisis.  What can we do?

     I don't really expect a definitive answer to the question because there are so many variables and problems. Recycling is great but does take tremendous energy and does pollute. Better than most options, it still isn't the best. Selling wine in other types of containers such as aluminium or plastic isn't really viable because they have the same problem as glass -disposal.  Any form of recycling requires extensive energy and has unavoidable pollution.  

    Of course, one of our biggest disposal problems is the great number of people who dispose of anything by such simple methods as putting it in the back of an open pickup truck bed and driving down the road. "Oh, did that fly out?"  Litter doesn't get there on its own.  Currently we 'officially' create 4.1 pounds per day per person of trash. That's about 717,500 tons a day.  Unofficially the number goes as high as 1,242,500 tons of trash per day.  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch off the coast of California is 600,000 square miles or twice the size of the State of Texas.  But we all know these problems.  

    When I was a boy we could make a little money by collecting "pop" (soda, coke) bottles and turning them in at a grocery store.  Back then bottles were sterilized and reused.  What a novel idea.  What modern ever thought of reusing anything. We're a throwaway society because that's what makes the giant corps and one-percent richer. And we know that we want to make them richer, don't we? 

    When my children were young we had a large garden. We filled 1,000 Ball jars with food each fall. The jars were saved, washed and used many times over their life.  Who woulda thunk it?  

    Yes, such a uniquely old fashioned idea would cost money and it would cut into the profits of the super-rich, but it could help us deal with our environmental disaster.