Okay, so you're down to $.0499 (aprox) per bottle. That's not taking into account the time needed to do this, or the time needed to collect the bottles, or the gas/equipment needed to haul the bottles.
This sounds like a dozens of dollars level scam, not millions.
$0.05 and 10 seconds per bottle is $18/hour, which is decent. (Although that doesn't account for actually getting the bottle, or travel, or redeeming the bottle which isn't very fast.)
> not millions
No, not individually, but if tons of people are doing it all day, it adds up.
And bumping the fee to $0.10 makes it $36/hour which is very attractive to someone who doesn't have a job.
Again, the actual earnings are lower, but I think it's a realistic type of fraud.
This plan doesn't scale. You can't bump the fee to $.10 an hour because there's fixed costs associated with this specific plan (paper, glue, transportation, etc).
There is a viable way to do recycling fraud, but DIY stickers isn't it.
This sounds like a dozens of dollars level scam, not millions.