[Steltek]

Personal anecdote time, I guess. My state has a bottle deposit law. I don't return anything but it still goes into recycling. We buy very few individually packaged things, I honestly can't be bothered to collect large bulky containers and bring it back to a redemption center for a lousy $5 or less.

Generally speaking, our recycling outweighs our trash and (commercial) compost put together. Mostly the bottle deposit doesn't change my recycling or purchasing behavior and it only annoys me that I'm "throwing money away". I think the biggest reason to keep it is because it's a perverted form of social welfare for homeless trash pickers who have a different tradeoff of time for money than myself.

[bobthepanda]

Part of the problem is that nickel deposits were introduced in the '70s but have not been adjusted for inflation. The inflation-adjusted value of a nickel in the '70s is closer to a quarter, and if the deposit on the bottle was a quarter people would certainly feel more strongly about collecting said deposit back.