The other way is to reuse very inert materials like stainless steel or glass. Outlaw all the silly marketing designs and make them standarized like shipping containers and buy them back from the consumer. It used to work this way before plastics came along anyway. Beer and milk bottles would be swapped for instance.
Right now we have 4 items we can basically recycle.
Glass -> fairly straight forward to recycle
Metal -> fairly straight forward to recycle
Paper -> depends and very water intensive but kind of OK and not totally terrible if it is just burnt. But nearly as all over the place as plastic.
Plastic -> All over the place and dozens upon dozens of differing types rules regulations and depending on your local area how much is actually 'recycled' (a lot less than you think)
Then on top of that we are to reduce, reuse, recycle. The manufactures have skipped the first two steps and blame us for it.
Plastic is the worst of them to recycle it has the least recyclability. I have seen estimates from anywhere for 5% to 10% of the total plastic stream. Then customer shaming and deceptive tactics to make me feel bad for this. The bottom line is plastic is the worst for recyclability yet we use it for a good portion of our containers. We are worried about plastic straws and yet a good portion of the food I buy comes in a plastic container. Instead we should be putting pressure on the upstream to give us containers that they and we can reuse.
It's worth separating out the packaging waste in statistics e.g. if you buy a plastic doll in plastic packaging, the doll might account for most of the plastic.
If you buy a plastic lawn chair there may be no packaging, but still a sizeable lump of plastic.
Plus global averages hide variation in package recycling (and reclamation) rates are surprisingly okay in developed nations, even in the US which you'd think is culturally incapable based on the anecdotes you hear. It seems like big cities where lots of people live are doing better than less dense areas where relatively few people live, which keeps the stats high.
