Bottle Deposit Lottery – Genius or Ridiculous?

Hear me out. What if instead of returning cans for 10 cents, you had the option to enter a cans and bottle deposit lottery? Instead of 10 cents a bottle, each bottle gave you a 1-in-10,000 chance of winning $1,000. A recent study in ScienceDirect did just this. The result was a 47% bump in recycling rates.

There are ten states in the U.S. that have a bottle deposit. The deposit amount ranges from 2 cents to 15 cents depending on the type of container. The most common deposit amount is 5 cents.

I remember as a young child the bottle deposit becoming a thing in Michigan. I only remember because my dad was fired up over it being such a steep deposit. I looked up the exact year.

Michigan started having a bottle deposit in 1978. The inflation calculator on dollartimes.com translates 10 cents in 1978 to 51 cents today! Can you imagine if our deposit was 50 cents on each bottle or can? That's 6 bucks for every 12 pack of pop! I would be complaining just like my dad. Conversely, a 10 cent deposit today is equal to 2 cents in 1978.

In today's money, a 10 cent deposit isn't much.  So the study looked at what would happen if places skipped the normal payouts and used a bottle deposit lottery instead. For example, our Michigan 10 cent deposit would give you a 1-in-10,000 chance of winning $1,000. The math for the state is the same. 10,000 cans equals $1,000.

The study took place in Canada. They have a bottle deposit already, but the area where the study took place was still having problems with people throwing bottle and cans in the trash. How many of us have seen the same thing here?

Instead of 10 cents, each bottle gave people a 1-in-10,000 chance of winning $1,000.  So, the same amount of money per bottle, but only one person gets it. People in the study recycled 47% more bottles when there was a big jackpot on the line.

The lead author of the study said, "The thrill of possibly winning a big prize is more motivating than a small guaranteed reward. It's the same reason people buy lottery tickets. That tiny chance of a big win is exciting."

Yes. Norway has a lottery-based recycling system where you can win prizes worth between $1 and $100,000!

They actually blend both systems.  When you turn in a bottle, you have a choice of getting a few cents for it, or a chance at the big money.

It's become so popular that Norway's recycling rate is close to 100%. Here's a video explaining the Norway bottle deposit lottery program.