Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it is very cheap and viable to wash/reuse bottles, but this requires special handling and isn't compatible with the single-stream systems widely used in the US. In the US we throw everything into a truck and we expect recyclers to sort and re-melt a bunch of broken shards of assorted glass.
Oh man, US is so behind the times in this respect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation In the NL, such 'reverse vending machines' are in every supermarket. They take PET soda bottles, soda cans (since 2023, €0.15 deposit per can), and a few (standardized) types of glass beer bottles. The latter are often bought in crates, which (with empty bottles in them), are taken by the machine as a whole.…
But the push for single-stream recycling has led many well intentioned people to believe that solution is good enough.