But even then, you often aren't returning the plastic bottles to be reused anymore, instead they're just recycled. --When I first moved to Norway in 2008, the soda bottles actually were collected, cleaned, and reused, but they stopped doing that, and now they're only recycled. --It's better than them ending up in landfills or being burned for energy, but as has been noted, plastic can only be recycled so many times, so it still ends up causing more plastic to be manufactured.