[nitrogen]

Given that it's individuals who transported those single-use items to the location where they were consumed, it makes perfect sense that those same individuals should transport them back to trash handling facilities. How else are you going to bring drinks to a picnic, if not in some sort of container, that you are then responsible for regardless of how many times that container can be used or what it's made of?

[spats1990]

If you read my link, it's not even about "trash handling facilities", but about the profitability of single-use bottles vs refillable ones for manufacturers.

There are lots of things in what we call civilised society that act as gentle guidance mechanisms to encourage compliance toward some end that is desirable for everybody.

Without some incentive to transport single use items to an appropriate receptacle some people will always just throw them on the ground, as it costs them nothing to do so.

The makers of single use drink bottles have thus privatised profit and socialised the negative externalities of their product. The money goes in their pockets, and the bottles go in the ocean.