From 1978 to 1988, beverage containers accounted for a steadily decreasing percentage of the total weight of household garbage in the United States  The increasingly widespread practice of recycling aluminum and glass was responsible for most of this decline
However, although aluminum recycling was more widely practiced in this period than glass recycling, it was found that the weight of glass bottles in household garbage declined by a greater percentage than the weight of aluminum cans
Glass bottles are significantly heavier than aluminum cans of comparable size.