Recycling anyone?

While I am an SUV-driving, non-organic food buying, global-warming is crap thinking gal, I do what I can when it comes to recycling. We have a large garbage can just for recycling that we can put a variety of items in, including, aerosol cans, plastic containers, newspapers and cardboard and we have a separate container for glass and motor oil. I think we do a pretty good job of recycling but I'm sure we could always do more.

In Oregon you pay a 5 cent deposit on all soda cans, plastic soda/juice bottles and just recently added plastic water bottles and they have been talking about raising the deposit to 10 cents. Wednesdays are our garbage/recycle pick up days and Tuesday evenings and early Wednesday mornings there are several people walking through the neighborhood with their shopping carts rummaging through trash cans to find any recyclable container that someone threw away. I am amazed every week as they walk by our house with the entire shopping full as well as several large garbage bags hanging over the side of the cart full.

Now yes, recycling of cans/bottles does take a little time and you have to wear gloves, but I am unwilling to just throw away my money or give it to the shopping cart folks as I refuse to contribute to their habits (this is also true for the "change people" on every off ramp and street corner in this city, but that is a whole other topic), so Jeff and I store up our bags of recycled cans/bottles for four or five months and then turn them in. This past weekend Jeff and I turned in our cans (5 bags full) and got $17.81 back, so I am unsure why apparently so many people through my own neighborhood are willing to throw or give, depending on your prospective, their money away. Is it laziness, do they somehow not know that they get charged 5 cents per container, or are they just so well off that their 5 cents doesn't add up like mine does?

Any thoughts on recycling?