> How is that different from the gig economy? It's different because the purpose of the deposit isn't to crowdsource people to exploit via underpaying them to

> How is that different from the gig economy? It's different because the purpose of the deposit isn't to crowdsource people to exploit via underpaying them to recycle, whereas that is exactly the case for the gig economy. Uber, Airbnb, etc. rely on individual contractors being cheaper than their regulated equivalent (Taxis, hotels) while also putting the risk on them. The purpose of the deposit is harm reduction - incentivize people to stop littering their recyclables by charging them money for the bottles/cans. If we were to remove the deposit system and instead replace it with paid workers, why would any particular individual care about not littering? After all, our taxes pay for workers to clean it up. I'm not saying I espouse that belief, but when you increase the convenience factor of something like littering, people will do it more often. When it hurts people's pocketbooks to litter, they do it less. Take, for example, plastic grocery bags. Everyone knows plastic grocery bags create a huge waste problem and a little bit of thoughtfulness (bringing reusable bags with you) can mitigate the amount of bags used. However, it wasn't until we started charging a fee for grocery bags that usage numbers dropped significantly.