The deposit is meant to incentive recycling

Unless there is a law that says you can only recycle goods in the state they were purchased in, this is just frivolous in my opinion. If any company did this (they do things like this all the time btw, it's literally the principle that drives outsourcing jobs/manufacturing/etc), it would be called good business sense. Rephrased my second portion which was overly cynical/came off as rude. As a Californian myself, if I really want to protect the environment, shouldn't we be taking outsourced materials that won't be recycled otherwise? As of 2021, we only recycled a little more than half of all bottles and cans, and we don't have enough recycling centers to service metro areas, Riverside and SB counties included. If the CRV really is a recycling incentive, and not a revenue generating tax (which it is - 90% of Californians don't get their CRVs back because they do in the recycling container they ALSO pay monthly for), and we have a surplus of the CRV, shouldn't we be okay with going above and beyond?

If you don’t pay the deposit, but try to claim it, that’s fraud.

So you want to start arresting all the homeless and underprivileged that spend 10-12 hours a day can diving to make ends meet? I personally do not have that level in my heart.

So according to you, a guy picks up a dollar off the street, tries to spend it, that's fraud?