In Russia and in many other countries countries of the world, a significant part of waste, including containers and packaging is disposed. This process is accompanied by numerous violations of environmental requirements, and it is a global problem that requires the consolidation and efforts of the goverment, agencies and consumers. The purpose of the article is to analyze the international practice on recycling of returnable containers and packaging and compare it with the situation in the situation of the govermant Russian Federation. The paper analyzes the problems associated with the state policy in the field of solid municipal waste management. Open data of statistical observations of Rosstat of the Russian Federation and Eurostat EU, sources of legal, regulatory and scientific literature were used as materials. On the basis of the analysis, the practices and scientific research devoted to logistics, recycling of returnable containers and packaging are summarized. It is shown that the share of recycled containers and packaging in the EU countries reaches 40-70% of the total weight. At the same time, the EU and the USA countries are improving the regulatory requirements for suppliers and manufacturers of packaging containers and packaging, strengthening the role of public institutions in the context of public policies to increase environmental responsibility, in terms of consolidating the Baltic region countries, to address the problems caused by the ingress of microplastics into the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. For Russia, the problems of recycling returnable containers and packaging are due to the practice of the post-Soviet period, when the mechanisms of separate waste collection were lost. The level of waste recycling in the Russian Federation does not exceed 7% (according to various estimates, from 7 to 15% of plastic waste). It is obvious that the lack of scientific research in the Russian Federation, which has a high applied effect, including marketing, recycling, logistics of packaging and packaging, has led to a strong or a very remarkable slow down slowdown in the reform of solid municipal waste management, and in particular the disposal of plastic packaging and returnable packaging, despite the adoption of «extended producer responsibility»