I would like to add a funny story between Colin Powell and the German Green Party member "Joschka Fischer" who once also was our Foreign Minister.
In Europe, you can sometimes be happily surprised how well some persons with different political ideas and intentions could become a kind of friends.
Powell and Fischer were always in a kind of friendly teasing each other when they met and Fischer as a "Green one" once told Powell: "You US-Americans simply have to learn that you cannot use all resources and then you are throwing them away. On this planet we cannot go on like this for much longer times. For example, the German beer which we are drinking here in the German foreign ministry is in glass bottles on which there is an additional bottle deposit and my ministry collects all of them and brings the bottles back to the breweries which let them clean or melt in order to make new bottles out of the same glass. We also try to recycle all our cans and spare a lot of money by this. You should this do, too, in the USA with all your bottles and cans!"
Powell: "Hrrrm! We will see ... but this German beer is really good. Could I take with me some of these bottles from here to the USA?"
Fischer: "Yes, sure, I even will give you some beer crates and several six-packs from different breweries as a little friendship present!"
About three months later, an US-Captain arrived at the German Foreign Ministry and handed all the emptied bottles and cans for Fischer back with this message from Colin Powell:
"You Germans can do this recycling much better than we in the USA and you have told me, you could get a lot of spared money back! Thank you very much for this excellent beer!"
Fischer was said to have laughed for the rest of this day.