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Comment by Afforess | Hacker News Reader

Is this still even a thing? Michigan also has a 10 cent deposit, and fraud was an issue in the 90's, but it's been fixed since. Grocery stores use automated bottle scanners to check barcodes. I'm not sure how you could "fool" a machine that needs a barcode for each physical bottle return.

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It does check the barcode, but a generic coke bottle could have been purchased in Washington and returned across the boarder for 10 cents.

That’s a valid bottle, but an abuse of the system because they are getting 10 cents from Oregon that was never paid. The point of the program is you pay 10 cents and get it back if you recycle.

Someone paid those 10 cents, though... And then didn't return the bottle.

As long as returns are <100%, I don't think it matters who bought the bottle.

They didn't pay the 10 cents if they bought the bottle in a state with a smaller deposit.

Someone else did though, so the 10 cents is paid in full.

Well, sorta.

The cost is covered because many bottle deposits end up going unclaimed.

But nobody paid 10 cents for that bottle.

So who's being harmed? The point is to get bottles to be recycled and they're getting recycled.

> The point of the program is you pay 10 cents and get it back if you recycle.

The point of program is to recycle bottles. Exchanging money is means to an end not an end itself.

And to reduce litter as well.

Michigan's bottle return isn't really a good system considering most of the machines will always reject bottles from other store brands, and will often reject less popular bottles/cans from the same store. Plus, it only applies to carbonated drinks.

Exactly what I was going to write. There is no import of cans from Ohio to Michigan, because it doesn't work.

> I'm not sure how you could "fool" a machine that needs a barcode for each physical bottle return.

You photocopy a sheet of barcodes and stick them on the bottles.

Some machines you can even hold the barcode in your hand, and put the bottle in, then you can put anything in and reuse the barcode endlessly.

You mean print proper barcode and put it over original one?

For $0.10 a can, I don't see this strategy being profitable.

A sheet of paper can easily hold 60 barcodes, and costs about 5 cents to copy. A pack of gluesticks is $1 and can handle hundreds of bottles.

Okay, so you're down to $.0499 (aprox) per bottle. That's not taking into account the time needed to do this, or the time needed to collect the bottles, or the gas/equipment needed to haul the bottles.

This sounds like a dozens of dollars level scam, not millions.

$0.05 and 10 seconds per bottle is $18/hour, which is decent. (Although that doesn't account for actually getting the bottle, or travel, or redeeming the bottle which isn't very fast.)

> not millions

No, not individually, but if tons of people are doing it all day, it adds up.

And bumping the fee to $0.10 makes it $36/hour which is very attractive to someone who doesn't have a job.

Again, the actual earnings are lower, but I think it's a realistic type of fraud.

This plan doesn't scale. You can't bump the fee to $.10 an hour because there's fixed costs associated with this specific plan (paper, glue, transportation, etc).

There is a viable way to do recycling fraud, but DIY stickers isn't it.

And time is free. Just get prisoners to do it. And then you have to ship the bottles to them, of course, unload, and load them back.

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