My point is precisely a criticism of it not being the norm.

Here’s how it works, where it works: you buy a liter of coke in a glass bottle, it costs $2 but you pay $4 because you have no bottle to return. You drink it. When you want more Coke you bring the bottle and exchange it for a full bottle. Option 2: you buy the Coke for $2, drink it there and return the bottle right there.

Am I calling for banning plastic? No. But the default where I grew up was the glass bottle, no plastic waste. Plastic is almost never fully recycled, it degrades every cycle and is often mixed in with new plastic because it makes the manufacturing process less variable.