Funny that you posted this. I had an "Ah ha!" moment today when I was checking out at the supermarket and a glass jar fell on the floor and broke. Luckily it didn't make a mess, but I realized how much money plastic containers must be saving the supermarket in lost goods.
We have a slightly different problem here which is that we have single stream recycling. My understanding is that glass is a bad thing in this method because too many glass shards in the paper can get a shipment of paper rejected which costs the recycler (and the environment) since it has to be trashed. So I've taken to boxing my recycled paper in efforts to keep it clean.
I wish I had a better solution regarding plastic, but I think the best you can do is make sure that when you have a choice, you choose something else. You can also, if you drink soda, choose to use cans instead. But most items, you don't have a choice.
The biggest irony for me, regarding meat, is that it I get pastured meat via a farm share (yes, this is not cheap, so probably not very Mustachian, but it solves a lot of environmental problems and is healthier for multiple reasons), but the meat is sealed in plastic. Can't think of any way around it as it's delivered frozen and it would probably not last wrapped in paper. But the irony is getting environmentally "clean" meat wrapped in plastics that are probably leaching something :/