Yeah, seems to be a common theme across the world, there used to be some standard and system for reusing/recycling containers... and now it's gone. We've gone backwards on this for some reason.

The bottle recycling system in Finland and Sweden is brilliant. Each bottle has a small (5-20c) deposit tied to it's price which you get back at the ubiquitous bottle returning machines in grocery stores. This creates a pseudo-job for the homeless and youths and unemployed etc. to aggressively collect all the bottles and cans they can find in the city. It creates it's own little economy.

I'm always surprised this hasn't been expanded to other uses and more countries.