You make look silly with two giant garbage bags hanging off your bike, but at the end of the day who's holding on to 20 bucks? It felt like a fortune back then, and was an honest hard days work.
That's the biggest problem for me. It was a fortune back then. My family would collect bottles all year and cash them in for a vacation. But back then it was 10c per bottle... 30 years ago. Today, it's still 10c per bottle. With inflation, that's more like 5c per bottle. Couple that with the rise in bottled water and other non-carbonated drinks that don't have deposit on them plus a lot of store brands and specialty bottles that require you to go to multiple stores to return, a whole day of collecting bottles might only net you $5. And then you have to spend another day going back and forth between Family Fare, Kroger, Meijer, Walmart, Target, and maybe even a specialty bottle store.
Even for kids, a lot of times it's not worth it for just a few bucks.