Plastic bottles and cans really need to have a nationwide deposit system in the US - the way Norway does it helps a lot - they have either a 1 or 2.5kr deposit depending on the size of the bottle, and all the grocery stores have a machine that you feed them into that checks for the label and gives you a slip to get the money from the cashier.
It'd be nice if we could find a way to extend that type of system to other types of waste, but that gets more difficult.
> Plastic bottles and cans really need to have a nationwide deposit system in the US
No, they really don't. Having spent enough time in states that do and states that don't, I can tell you that having a deposit system encourages some bad behavior and doesn't really solve the problem.
1. It encourages scavenger people that dig through recycling and garbage making a mess of things in order to find large bottles with a deposit. On face value you think, 'yay, we get free sanitation workers cleaning up the city'. The reality is, they find the most efficient way to dig through and don't care about throwing disposable trash all over to get the loot.
2. Hoarding. I've seen people's kitchens and basements filled with cans because they want to do it all in one shot or for some special occasion. It makes a mess and is super annoying. You like fruit flies? This is how you get fruit flies.
3. It's inefficient. People who have the means will still not care about collecting the deposit because it's a PITA to go down to the store with the empties. The only people who get excited about it are the same people who think a tax refund is actually a gift from the government..
While it might solve some of the above problems, you won't find much luck making deposits $1/bottle or something in the US because it's only going to make life more of a pain for the poor. It's not a workable solution.
Speaking of Norway - we've also dealt nicely with the plastic bag issue by having sturdy grocery bags that we subsequently also use as garbage bags (big black thrash bags aren't commonly used).
A few years ago the government suggested taxing plastic bags to gain revenue, but it was discarded since the environmental organizations concluded it would be bad for the environment (as more people would throw garbage directly into thrash cans/buy thrash bags).
Conversely my regional grocery store chain has recently switched to even thinner plastic bags. Used to be you could at least use them for trash, but now they're pretty much useless.
While I love the idea, I'd much rather see the money required to rollout a national deposit system go to expanding domestic and commercial recycling programs nationally. This includes subsidizing any costs with providing recycling bins as well as building and maintaining sorting centers.
deposit systems have a limited lifetime, the get killed by inflation. For example, glass beer bottles in GER have a deposit of 8 cent. This used to be 15 Pfennig, a pretty high amount when the deposit was introduced. But since you can't raise the deposit (bottles suddenly would raise in value) and inflation pushes down the purchasing power, even bottle collectors tend to leave glass bottles behind.
It'd be nice if we could find a way to extend that type of system to other types of waste, but that gets more difficult.