Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour and Americans use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year both of which are made from high-quality recyclable materials.
It would be a major step toward our environmental impact if we could provide legislation requiring a deposit on every bottle and can sold and a requirement that any retailer selling bottled and canned beverages accept the return for cash. The amount of the deposit should be tied to the rate of return of beverage containers. If we couple this with some standardization of cans and bottles, and reverse-vending machines like those made by Tomra, the US could capture a significant percentage of this valuable trash.
Countries where this style of legislation has been enacted are seeing over 90% return rates.