In rural Australia and many in the towns and cities had an incinerator in their back yard. This could be made of bricks or just a drum with the top cut off and you stuck your rubbish in there and burned it. There was no plastic back then as you brought your groceries in paper bags or cardboard boxes. The boxes were generally near the checkouts and are what the bulk goods were sent to the shops in. Most goods came in tin cans, Glass, paper bags or cardboard. Chocolate came wrapped in aluminium foil. Glass drink bottles could be returned for their deposit and were the only thing that could be recycled as they could be washed and reused. Glass jars were likely kept to put stuff in and every house had jars of clothes buttons for clothing repairs and sewing new clothes. My grandmother used to fold all cardboard cereal boxes down and cut them open for her kids and us to use to draw on the back of, or to use for crafts. Newspapers were piled up and were sold when you had a armful to the butcher or the fish and chip shop to wrap meat or fish and chips in. My grandmother used to let me take the newspapers down to the butcher every week and I got a sixpence for them (5cents) which I then would buy sweets with. They would lay down several sheets of newspapers then a sheet of white paper in which your food was placed and all wrapped up. You would buy your fish and chips then tear the end of the newspapers out and eat the fish and chips out of the hole. So the newspapers were also recycled to wrap these things in.
What you could got burned in the incinerator generally smoking out the very annoyed neighbour who had just hung out her washing making the clothes smell like smoke. Generally cans went in with the rubbish and after a few burns rusted and disintegrated away.
On rare occasions dad would tow a trailer of junk we were throwing away down to the town dump which had no dumping charges back then. We would scour the dump to see if anything we thought would be good to take home and play with. Early plastic dishwashing liquid bottles we would drill a hole in the lid fill them with water and use them like water pistols and squirt each other.
Food came with way less wasteful packaging. There was no plastic wrap or those Styrofoam trays meat comes on now. There were no spray cans. Back then fly spray came in bottles and you tipped in into a sprayer that you had to pump to make the liquid spray out in very small droplets. My mother bought flour and sugar in bulk in about 40lbs bags (about 20 kgs), as mothers cooked most meals as well as cakes and biscuits back then. The bags were made of several layers of paper and sewn shut at the top. Bought fish and chips were a rare treat, and a 750ml bottle of soft drink was split amongst our family of 7. Think now many young people would guzzle a 600ml bottle of coke on there own these days.
Back then very little waste was produced by a family. Nearly all packaging could be safely burned as there was no plastic, As I said soft drink bottles and beer bottles could be sold back to the shops or the bottle man who actually recycled the beer bottles back to the Breweries. Jars would be kept for storing stuff.
As kid I was brought up on a farm and we disposed most rubbish by burning it in an old petrol drum. As I said once or twice a year dad hooked up the trailer and we took any large rubbish to the dump. We had no council rubbish pick up so every family had to dispose their own rubbish and in most cases it was burned in the back yard. The quantity of packaging back then was way less than today and so the amount of rubbish that a large family of 7 made is way less that what a family of 4 makes today. Packaging was either returnable bottles, tin cans, or paper and cardboard. Even a block of ice cream was sold in cardboard boxes. My family used to buy about the equivalent of 5 litres of ice cream a week in a tin can. The can was sent back to the factory and reused to put more ice cream in.
Today everything comes in plastic and is a menace to the environment as a lot of it is not recycled especially out in the country areas. Products are quite often double packed these days in highly polluting plastic. So many modern products packaging are designed without thought in how to recycle them. Spray cans are a good example. Modern living is so wasteful and so are people. My grandmother threw nothing out and always found a use for virtually all packaging. Sho would not buy paper for children to draw on. She used the pieces of paper and plain cardboard she scavenged from packaging. Buttons and other things filled empty jars. During the depression my grandfather made yoyos for my dad and his brothers from old shoe polish cans and bits of dowel and string for Christmas presents. Our presents from Grandma were generally old books she had given to her own children that were carefully looked after and kept and now given to us. Even the Christmas cards and Birthday cards were reused and would have the previous name crossed out and your own name written in it. My grandparents virtually threw nothing away. She was the ultimate recycler.
Council rubbish dumps were generally just covered with dirt, but as people threw little away it would take many years to fill a small dump. Men would sometimes take more stuff home from the dump than they took there. One man's rubbish can be another man's treasure.