“people rinsing every single little drink bottle or can”
You need a serious lesson in how much water it takes to mine the Bauxite to make a single can. Let alone the diesel fuel for the massive line haul trucks the 100 tonne kind with 20 foot tall tires on them that cost over 50K per tire. Then the huge amounts of water soluble chemicals needed to strip out the alumina ore from the toxic red mud that’s then left in ponds to be toxic for all eternity unlike spent fuel that eventually will decay red mud is chemicals toxic for all eternity. Then the massive amounts of electric current needed to refine alumina ore into it’s metal form. There is a reason Alcoa is located right next to lignite mines in Texas and hydro energy in Iceland.
Recycling a single aluminum can requires just 5% of the energy needed to mine and process new metal from bauxite ore. Read that again so you get it.
It’s 4 to 1 red mud to alumina raw ore as well.
Aluminum is the most recycled material on the planet 75% of all aluminum ever mined is still in circulation because it’s so much more energy efficient to recycle vs mine, refine,process and form new aluminum.
All that, and I never said anything about throwing away the cans.