This answer isn't getting enough upvotes

The idea of a standardized container that is so sexy. Bonus points if it comes in a variety of sizes that perfectly scale and tesselate together.

You can reuse jars, ideally you would buy new lids, though when my mother or grandmother would make jam they would reuse "good" lids and the jars would seal well - I found a 20 year old reused jar and lid still sealed

Good lids being those where the seal is in good condition

There are very few lid sizes and threads

Only someone desperate or lucky would take city compost.

The chemicals that might have been sprayed on them can carry through even a good hot compost and affect your plants.

Then again I also don’t trust commercial compost for the same reason.

I have heard too many stories about losing a whole garden.

I live dangerously- I make yogurt in old jam jars!
...Though you only need to go to 180° and don't need pressurization for it.

But I absolutely echo you with that, the fact that you can't use most glass for this is insane.

And I only use the Baba Maman jars, they're the only ones resilient enough.

Speaking of greenwashing I still remember laughing my ass off when I unwrapped a plastic cover for a paper straw, which made it even funnier is that before then, they would wrap plastic straws in paper wrapping, so why they didn't just use that is completely beyond me.

I remember cheering sarcastically the first time I saw a paper straw actually in a paper wrapping.

Exactly, there is so much industrial waste before a product makes it to you. Yet everyone focuses on the consumer use which makes it inconvenient for the end user and ignores all the "invisible" waste which would require investment from businesses to fix but would have a far larger effect on the environment. Not being able to get a plastic straw or PE film bag doesn't really improve anything since the alternatives are worse and in many cases far worse for the environment even when reused.

Washing and reusing is much more environmentally friendly than recycling. It may be more expensive because of the current societal/legal environment but given the right incentives, it doesn't have to be.

Why do we need the expense of returning glass bottles for washing and reuse, when glass recycling works and is much cheaper?

Consider simply the energy use...

Heating up water to high preassure steam to sterilize bottles uses way less energy than it takes to melt glass, keep it at the correct temperature, reform the bottle, letting it cool slowly (to prevent cracking) and steam clean it before filling the new bottle.

If anything we will see a new focus on the "reuse" part of the "reduce, reuse, recyle" process.

There is a reson as to why the verbs in the process are ordered in that way...

The most environmentally friendly action, is to reduce our consumption of materials, if that is not possible, then we should reuse the finnished product for as long as possible, if that is not possible, then we should recycle the materials into a new and better product rather than digging up more materieal.

I was not under the impression that glass recycling penciled out (as in, it costs more to recycle than make new). My area crushes "recycled" glass and uses it to cover landfills (which is better than having it inside the landfill, but it still leaves the consumer system).

when glass recycling works and is much cheaper?

Glass recycling works but its far more energy intensive. The saying was Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and it was in that order for a reason.

when glass recycling works and is much cheaper

[Citation needed]

As fireweed said, I think it is too energy intensive especially with the contamination issues.

I think it would be interesting if packaging in many areas was standardized to actually useful products, like if products came in aesthetically designed drinking glasses and dinnerware.

I think it might be more effective to ask how this is/was done in other parts of the world presently. I've never been outside of North America except for visiting Hawaii once. I've seen documentaries about foreign bazaars and know the basic history of the Roman Fora, but I don't know how this translates to or evolves to meet the needs of Western culture presently and visa versa.

Those aren't really good either. Even glass, as much as it is better, still needs yo be washed and reused which uses more aggressive chemicals than most would be comfortable with.

Fact is that like everything in life, stuff is a tradeoff. Can we wash and re-use glass without aggressive water harming cleaning fluids? Sure. But that means more danger from it. We could also use degradable plastics but those are problematic as well. Tins are an issue in general plus they can only be used for some foods. Waxed paper is even trickier to recycle than most other things, not durable, and again only suited for some foods.

Ultimately, it's health vs recyclability. There's always a tradeoff.

We gave up on reusing glass bottles in large part because they were not sanitary. Every boomer has stories of finding cigarette butts in their soda and beer.

I live in a county that almost religiously reuses glass bottles and have never heard nor experienced such a story. Seems like someone figured out how to sanitize them.

We gave up on reusing glass bottles because the return payout never rose to match inflation. It was a nickel in 1960, that’s be 50 cents now!

It had to be that much because otherwise it didn’t make sense for people to actually return the bottles to the local pickup spot or drive them a few dozen miles from that spot to the local bottling plant.

As bottling moved away from washing and reusing glass, it became more centralized and switched to a medium more suited to centralized distribution, plastic. Now it really doesn’t make sense to return bottles and drive them hundreds of miles back to the national bottling plant.

"Sustainably sourced" doesn't always mean "environmentally sustainable". Unfortunately a lot of bioplastic still isn't biodegradable and will leave us with the same waste issue as regular plastic.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220303055

Video explainer: https://youtu.be/-_eGOyAiNIQ

We gave up on reusing glass bottles in large part because they were not sanitary.

We gave up on them because they are less good looking. It's dead easy to sanitise glass. You can do it chemically, thermally, or radiologically (with UV through to gamma rays).

We haven't even picked the low-hanging fruit of energy production yet.

What is the low-hanging fruit of energy production?

Renewable sourcing is nice, but that doesn’t really address the main problem, which is what happens to the plastic after you’ve used it. If it’s burned, it will release the previously stored carbon into the atmosphere. If it’s recycled, the carbon stays in circulation. If it’s biodegradable, it solves the plastic problem for the most part.