Well, gee whiz, didn't you see Wall-E?
I agree, we do need to be good citizens as we can and recycle.
In SF, it is not uncommon to see many a 60+ chinese lady toting huge bags of crushed cans and bottles to the local grocery recycling. I realize they're digging in the trash (and the recycling bins people put in front of their homes) for the money, but they must be making a fair amount with the size of the bags I see them toting to Cala Market on Cal and Hyde.
There are separate trucks that come to our building, one for recylcing and one for the trash.
I've given up carrying bottled water (I was a big waster, cases upon case of bottled water for years) and I use a bottle that I can wash. We've also converted to using a Pur filter rather than more bottled water for drinking (ancient pipes make for not so nice tasting water) and the Pur filter has cured that.