I live in NY(C) which has container deposits. I don't personally know anyone that bothers trying to redeem the container deposit. I personally don't because it'

I live in NY(C) which has container deposits. I don't personally know anyone that bothers trying to redeem the container deposit. I personally don't because it's really not worth my time at $0.05 per container. Particularly when I don't consume meaningful amounts of cans/bottles. Technically speaking, any retailer that sells containers is also required to redeem them. In practice consumers don't really bother since no one really wants to wait in the (frequently long) customer service line to talk to people to redeem containers. Some larger retailers have dedicated machines, but I still don't really bother since those machines aren't very convenient to get to for me. There's an entire "industry" where people pick containers out of recycling bins/trash/building-waste/building-recycling and then redeem it which creates interesting tensions with funding the NYC recycling program [0]. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/21/nyregion/new-york-city-fights-scavengers-over-a-treasure-trash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/21/nyregion/new-york-city-fi...