IMO, this is yet another government initiative that's turning out to be an absolute joke.
My 9yo daughter has been hounding our household to not throw our 10c deposit containers into the council bin. Instead, she wants to collect them and cash them in using the CDS Vic scheme. As she puts it, we get money AND the containers get recycled properly, rather than what happens with our commingled recycling bin.
The problem is, every time I go to one of the reverse vending machines in my area, they're out of order, or there's only one receiver working, with about six people in line, all with several bags or boxes each.
Then the CDS Vic app itself says the same operator is running an over the counter collection at our local netball club, but someone was dreaming when they put that into the app. I've never seen anyone collecting recycling there, and I drive past it at least twice daily.
The operator in our area (Return-It) should lose their contract for being fucking useless.
This has been going on for so long now, that I'm now holding an estimated 400-600 bottles and cans, which my daughter is begging me to not toss out, so we can get rid of them "the right way".
I'm all for doing the right thing, and making sure recyclables are, well, recycled properly, but when the personal inconvenience level is so high, all it does is cost more taxpayer dollars without moving the needle on our recycling performance.
/rant
My assumption for the collection point ones like the netball stadium you mentioned was that it was basically going to be like a storage tub underneath a counter and you'd hand your bottles to a person and they'd give you money for it, kinda like those scrap metal places. Is it actually more formal than that?
Well, according to the location details in the app, it was meant to handle electronic transfer too, so I assume they at least had a companion app that would scan the Scheme ID barcode in mine.