Not really the point of the post but sure, or directly relevant to my comment no contest with the options you laid out

Who brought up plastics?

That’s a bit of a leading question, as if I advocated for single use Plastic specifically.

I’m not a food health scientist so I’d leave it at: as a consumer I want whatever keeps people safe, and is of the least impactful material. Commonly that’s plastic, but as we see with glass bottles, options exist.

I’m all for packaging minimization but I also acknowledge that if I, the consumer seek single serving products, I’m pretty glad they are food safe and isolated. This is the part where “reduce” in the recycling slogan can manifest: what’s the absolute minimum packaging needed to keep a consumer safe?

I’m not saying companies shouldn’t ever be responsible for their packaging waste, it’s a good idea. But I think municipal trash is meant to be that answer, in that rather than every company managing their own streams of returns, the locality does it, and sorts them by general type for efficiency/efficacy.

Therefore I think it best to factor waste costs from the company into that centralized system, so efficiencies of scale can manifest. This allows for better oversight and lower overall costs. The game is not allowing companies to be absent from this stage.

With acknowledgment that increased costs would land on the consumer one way or another, I’d conclude by saying centralized waste management needs to be better funded, and more sophisticated recycle/reuse systems implemented with those new funds.

The performer is the uncomfortable one.