Well, for a start most of my milk still comes in glass bottles because its delivered. The problem with glass is that its heavy to transport of course and it has to be cleaned every round trip. Cartons are now recyclable it seems so I do that, as with cans and plastic food containers. The problem with recycling is that sadly the same carton cannot be cleaned and sterilised, it needs to be melted down into something to make something else and there seems a finite number of times you can do this, probably more energy hungry than sterilising a bottle , but I've never seen a comparison. Paper bags are fine, and still with us of course but they are a pain if you walk to do your shopping and its raining.
I personally think the pre packed food with plastic over it is probably extremely wasteful also they fill the package with gas of some kind to help preserve the contents.
The universe likes to make disorder from order and this is why there is so much plastic around the environment. Its not good, but what can we do, the cat is out of the bag so to speak. Brian