The graph at the right shows the historical value of 5¢ from 1969 to
2007 according to data from the
Reserve Bank of Australia.
This graph shows that when the mandatory deposit was introduced in 1975,
5¢ bought the same as 35¢ buys in 2007.
Puting it the other way, the 5¢ you get for a can in 2007 has less
buying power than 1¢ had in 1975.
The Dunstan government of 1975 had the statesmanship to create a deposit that was large enough to make sure that most containers were recycled. Every government since then has been content to allow inflation to whittle away at the real value of the deposit until we have the situation at present, where the deposit is insignificant.
In 2008 the container deposit was raised to 10¢, improving the situation slightly; but this was just a bit of catch-up, it didn't bring the deposit back to what it should be, as can be seen on the graph.
Some people would still collect containers for the deposit, because they don't have any other way of producing a little bit of income; some would collect them in the mistaken belief that it is financially worth their while to do so; some would collect used containers because they believe it is the right thing to do; but no-one who valued their time would bother to collect containers purely for the money that they would get out of it.
It is well passed time for a substantial increase in the container
deposit.
It should be increased to at least 25¢, even better to 50¢;
unfortunately it seems that no recent government has had the guts to stand
up to the beverage manufacturers and do it.
Notes
My information on the history of the SA container deposit was from HotKey, the full URL is "http://www.hotkey.net.au/~gargoyle/CDL/AroundTheWorld/Australia/ SA/GeneralInformation.html").The full URL for the data used to produce the above graph is "http://www.rba.gov.au/Statistics/Bulletin/G01hist.xls".