There’s a slightly odd slightly perverse incentive at play with this though that’s particularly relevant to the article. In Canada, we have a deposit on drink cans and bottles that varies between 5 and 10 cents. Many people collect their bottles and make a quarterly or annual or whatever trip to Sarcan (recycling depot) and walk out with a cheque for $30 or so. Businesses generally have recycling bins as well and cash out on their bottles every few weeks. But there’s still a bunch of people who throw them in the trash or just litter…

The result is that homeless people are often going around collecting bottles. On garbage day, I’ll often see at least two or three people walking down the alley collecting bottles out of everyone’s bins before the garbage truck shows up. And in parks you often see homeless people rummaging around the trash cans looking for bottles, or just walking around picking them up off the ground. For the people who are too lazy to handle it themselves, we’ve (unintentionally? Maybe?) incentivized homeless people to be trash collectors and get paid for it. If the deposits were larger, guaranteed this would ramp up.

In some European countries this type of deposit is normal for plastic and glass bottles and other drinks containers, though the deposit is usually much lower (25 to 50 cents).

The impact is significant, even if it's such a low amount of money. A €25 deposit would definitely keep people from throwing out these things en masse. There will always be people who will act selfishly and against their self interest, but you've got to be pretty damn rich to throw out €25 like it's nothing.