It's easier to sell to lonely individuals than a satisfied family. Hence all the crazy pressure to work more and be less... human.

You sure? People with families tend to spend more money (out of necessity). It's easier for people without kids to save up more money.

It's easier to meet your basic survival needs as an individual, and thus you have more disposable income for nonsense commodities. Everybody I know who is single and has a good job buys tons of junk they don't need (or often even want). It's the norm.

It's a variant of norm. Another variant is to throw away anything one doesn't use for more than a year, rent-not-buy most of entertaining stuff, including musical instruments, game consoles, fancy cars and dresses, holiday villas and yachts. Actually, hoarding and junk collecting is a prerogative of the poor.

Even renting "fancy cars and dresses, holiday villas and yachts" sounds like an opulent lifestyle, where someone has a lot of disposable income and is finding was to entertain himself with the extra cash.

It may sound like that, but it may be the other way around. Here in Moscow I can rent SmartForFour Cabrio for 720 RUB (10.80 USD) per hour via carshering app, insurance and city parking included. 45 feet sailing yacht on Mediterranean costs 2500 EUR per week and is suitable for up to 6 people, berthing and fuel will add 500 EUR, cheaper than most of hotels. Check out AirBnB for holiday villas)

Yeah I was literally doing some research on an electric unicycle that I probably won't use too often.

People with families spend more money on commodities. People without spend more on luxury goods which have higher margins.

I wish this was addressed more as a massive cost that only the employee must take on in order to even have a job.

People have to risk their lives using a machine that they have to source themselves to come into an office everyday while not being compensated for that time, danger, and financial investment.

Coke and Pepsi would sooner nuke the EU then allow for plastic bottles to be eliminated.

I'm sure between the two of them they produce most of the plastic waste in the world but I'm glad governments are attacking low hanging fruit instead.

In Norway all bottled beverages come in refillable plastic bottles. They’re basically the same as normal bottles but a bit thicker. You pay about 50 cents for the bottle, and every grocery store has a little machine where you return the bottles and get a refund. The whole system works pretty well. I wish the US had something similar.

Same in Finland and Sweden.

Aluminium cans are recycled too, and most glass bottles.

As a side note, where I live all waste is sorted (mixed, plastic, metal, cardboard, paper, clear glass, colored glass, biowaste, batteries, lamps...).

All this might seem like a a waste of money but it is actually beneficial: the municipality creates biogas from biowaste and runs the city buses with it. They produced so much gas that they sold it to neighbouring municipalities at least a few years back.