Totally agree with you Byron.

I suffered the kerbside issue 10 years ago when I moved house. For about a week I spent an hour or 2 sorting rubbish at the old place, and stacking it up for council collection.
I initially kept it all inside the property line, as you're not allowed to put it out on the kerb until the Sunday before.

After a couple of days, I had a small, neatly stacked pile, about 3-4 cubic metres in size. A mix of old packing boxes, VCRs, tape decks, an old tube TV, and some general workshop rubbish - steel offcuts, timber offcuts etc. I had it all layed out neatly sorted, so someone could easily take the timber for firewood, the metal for scrap etc.

I came back to find it everywhere. Someone moved a good 2 cubic metres of crap (scattered at random) to get to a VCR, simply to cut the cord off. I had styrofoam bundled all togther - tied with old speaker wire, and the mongrels cut the wire off to take it & let the foam blow all over the street. From what would have been lucky to be the footprint of a small car, I now had half the yard covered in crap.

The worst were 20L buckets of bolts & other fasteners I'd kept off all the cars I'd wrecked over the years. They went rusty after being flooded. I was going to take them to the scrappy, but figured i'd leave some treasure for the metal scabs. Then I found some asshole had tipped out the bolts & taken the buckets! I spotted the buckets 3 doors down, stacked up beside his garage, so out of anger, I took them back, and drilled a hole in each one. Took me forever with a magnet to clear the lawn of bolts, and pack them into cardboard boxes instead.

On about the 5th day I was walking out to the boot of the car with some old welding leads when a clapped-out 70s land cruiser rolled to a stop opposite my place.
Guy is half hanging out the driver's window, almost dragging his knuckes on the ground. He yells out "hey, you chucking that cable out too?"
I pretended not to hear him, so he got out, and comes over, wanting the cable. I told him I'm taking it with me, and he replied "oh dam, I thought I could get some more copper - I cut all the leads off this stuff the other night." In disbelief, I said "what about the old speaker wire holding all the styrofoam in bundles?" "yep, took that too."

No shame at all - he didn't believe he'd done anything wrong - openly admitting he was the one who "trashed" my neat piles. When I pointed to all the styrofoam around the street (some had been hit or run over by cars) he just shrugged.

He then got nasty when I wouldn't give him "first option" on any more junk, and said "I know where you live" so I replied "I know where you live - up around the corner, and I've moved out of here, and you don't have a clue where I've gone." He didn't like that, and took off.

So with that sort of mentality from someone confronted by the person they wronged - having no clue that what they did is actually wrong, it's only going to be far worse with an exhorbitant "re-capture" value put on waste packages. Like you said, 10c each - only takes 1000 to make $100. I probably use 4-5 "containers" a day that fit the bill. Add in the 4 others in my house, and we'd be up around a dozen at least maybe 15. There's $1.20 to $1.50 per day, or $10 a week. If the neighbours are similar, and they did my street once a week, that would be over $400 in one night - maybe as little as a few hours "work" too. I really don't see why it's needed, when people already recycle cans & bottles willingly. If you take a look out the window on any freeway it's more often littered with cigarette packs, fast-food bags, pink batts & flexible aircon ducts. Drink containers are the least of the litter problem.

We collected cans for a little while for my niece's school (she lives with us). It wasn't hard to separate & keep them. I'm thinking we should do the same now, but for us.



I think councils will be onto it quickly though, especially if they run the waste collection service themselves (like my council does) and see the profits being eroded.
I booked a council pickup for a fridge, took the doors off, and put it out as instructed. Within hours a ute pulled up & took it. I wrote down the plate, just in case anything came back to me (I once put a TV out, and the scab came to the door and had the hide to ask if I still had the remote for it).
Anyway, Monday morning I rang council at 8:30 to cancel the collection. They were already shitty because they'd turned up at 7am to an empty kerb. I told the lady what happened & she asked for the plate. Apparently they keep records of serial scabs. Not sure what they do about it though.



Kerbside collections can work the other way too - positively - since then I've never booked one, but had plenty of benefit. I've put out another fridge, a dozen old PC cases, some old metal boxes, old rusty car doors, alloy rims, a swing set, gazebo posts, a failed hot water tank, car batteries - too much to remember, and it's normally gone within hours. If something sits overnight I usually put a "free" sign on it & it goes quick.

Funniest one was the little Indian fellow in a hilux, trying to take the old 400L hot water tank. He would be lucky to weigh 60kg. He tried tilting it in, rolling it up a 4x2 (and nearly rolled it over himself). Nothing worked. He came back 1/2 hour later - his wife in the front of the ute this time. She got out, in the traditional colourful dress, stood it up, waved him to back the ute up to it, tipped the top into the ute, and shoved the bottom up into the tray like it was nothing. She had balls!

It sucks when you do the math. who ends up richer, not the consumer that's for sure.
I remember as a kid when the GLASS soft drink bottles were worth 5c on return. We used to jump the back fence and raid the local milkbar of a couple of bottles to get a bag of mixed lollies. He got wise and got himself a dog. Those old coke bottles are worth a bit now.

The recycle companies that pickup the yellow bins are already setup to get 10c back for every container that goes in the yellow bins.

Right, so if I buy a box of beer, drive to to the collection joint with my empties I will get $2.40 for my effort? Let’s say for I live 9.6 km from the collection point (just for ease, that’s what my Hilux averages), I will burn 2 litres of diesel. At $1.30 for fuel, I just spent $2.60 on diesel. I know that’s simplistic but the logic is undeniable. Recycling is a completely inefficient system. To actually achieve a result that’s works, you need to re-use containers. We used to have enough common sense to do this.
My local town has set its tip up as a modern recycling thing. Now the recycling rubbish gets driven 350km to Sydney. Hmm. That’s effective. Wear out trucks, roads and cause more environmental damage than ever saved by doing it in the first place. The non recyclable rubbish gets driven 100km to another town. To top it off, as a farmer here, I pay for a rubbish service that I don’t use(there is no pick up of rubbish or recycling for farms) then get slugged if I do take my bins to the tip as well. Now I am paying $5 extra to buy a box of beer so I can claim $2.40 back after I drive to whoop whoop as well? That’s not logical to anyone is it? Surely not.
Can’t everyone see this for what it is? It’s a tax.

Yeah if you are into this kind of thing it’s great. If you are not, then you have no opt out option. I just end up subsidising everyone else. It’s not democratic the way these ideals are forced upon the community. You have no choice. It’s just wrong. It should be voluntary for the manufacturer and paid for by the rubbish rates we already pay. End of story.

At Woolies yesterday. The 1.25L bottles of sparkling, infused water used to be $1.50. Now they are $1.65. 10c + GST + 4c gouge. The 20 packs of small water bottles that normally retailed for $10 however were $12, so only the extra $2 in bounty, no GST and no gouge.

I just had a look on the map where I can return. I know this will gradually increase, but the only locations anywhere near me are reverse vending machines in Woolies, all three at least 15min drive away, all in areas of lower socio-economic population (basically the Woolies where you will regularly see people shopping in their dressing gowns at 10am). So i'm buggered if i'm going to any of those, I can't imagine them happy to have me rock up with a full wizbin, and I imagine there will be line ups as well. Plus any of these three locations if you leave your car for too long you might lose your wheels!