It is a part of the safety net, whether it was designed that way or not. Note that I'm not claiming that it should be. Unfortunately it puts the collectors at

It is a part of the safety net, whether it was designed that way or not. Note that I'm not claiming that it should be. Unfortunately it puts the collectors at risk, because it incentivizes them to root through garbage cans full of potentially dangerous material without any protective equipment. And in the end its a complete waste of their time. If the government wants to earmark that money for them, they should just do that, and let those people do something meaningful like job training, or raising grandchildren, or whatever, instead of being up to their elbows in broken glass and used condoms in the middle of the night. Most of the recyclable material was already in somebody's recycling bin already, so it's not like they're cleaning up the environment or any other social good.