It would also be fascinating to provide transportation for the homeless to the nearest garbage dumps. Pay them for sorting out any recyclables. Allow them to take anything which might be of use to them.
While collecting the recycling, the collectors steal (from my family multiple times), root through unlocked cars, knife open garbage bags, trespass, wake up sleeping people, and act aggressively towards anyone who interferes.
The collectors themselves live outside of the system of taxes and services, have no safety equipment to to protect them from broken glass etc, and end up in a constant cycle of unemployment, drug dependence, and other ills.
I feel like Berkeley manufactured this "picker" existence - it's an externality of trying to be the most progressive recycling town, and it's no good for anyone involved.
When "three strikes" was foolishly overturned by pro-crime Californians, the amount that you have to steal to be charged with a felony also increased. So people can steal items from cars and doorsteps, in addition to recyclables, and never have to worry about spending a day in prison.
The other issue I've heard of is that the companies that collect recycling get money for them, too, and this is factored into their contract with the city. So when independent operators take the recycling it cuts into their revenue and upsets the government.
The recyclables belong to the city once I leave it out for recycling. They collect the value from it, including any deposit value.
As a Taxpayer, I want this value to go to the city.
Have a good night!
When I was kid, recycling was less common and the bottle return fee was worth more so I feel like more people participated. Now most people put their cans and bottles in the city recycling and lose the fee.
Really you don't want to do that at the dump though, as by that time useful items have been commingled with actual trash. Another memorable story is that there was one worker who couldn't deal with glass bottles if they had any liquid in them and would just freak out and put them in with the trash.
There is a tax on beverage containers of all types. This tax is reduced to be inversely proportional to return rates when return rates exceeds a certain level. So return rate of 40% means the seller pays only 60%. There is an additional charge on all containers that are not recyclable, regardless of the return rate.
There is then a recycling scheme that retailers can participate in which involves bottle collection and centralised reuse (glass bottles in good condition only) and recycling (glass and plastic bottles) and redemption. As a result of the high return rates coupled with the tax reduction, most larger stores etc. have machines you can feed bottles for store credit, and at least when I was a kid pretty much any corner store etc. would also take bottles and pay out cash.
This ability to return and redeem everywhere made picking bottles a simple way of making extra cash without having to go somewhere. When I was a kid it was a go-to way of supplementing my allowance, and you'd also see homeless people and retired people etc. doing it.
It's given Norway a return rate for glass bottles of 99%, and an overall return rate for recyclable beverage containers of 95%, which is well in excess of most places with bottle return programs.
Retailers have strong incentives to participate in the recycling programs to reduce their tax, especially given that all their competitors does too, and people expect to be able to return their bottles at the same time as making their purchases - if you don't participate in the return program, you force your customers to make an extra trip if shopping with you.
The fee used to be quite substantial, though I believe it makes up a smaller percentage of most beverages now as I don't think (I haven't lived in Norway the last 16 years) the redemption rate has kept up with inflation. When I was a kid at one point the bottle return for 0.5l bottles of soda was about 5% of the purchase price.
The type of supervised work described in this article seems like a much better approach.