It's different because the purpose of the deposit isn't to crowdsource people to exploit via underpaying them to recycle, whereas that is exactly the case for the gig economy. Uber, Airbnb, etc. rely on individual contractors being cheaper than their regulated equivalent (Taxis, hotels) while also putting the risk on them. The purpose of the deposit is harm reduction - incentivize people to stop littering their recyclables by charging them money for the bottles/cans.
If we were to remove the deposit system and instead replace it with paid workers, why would any particular individual care about not littering? After all, our taxes pay for workers to clean it up. I'm not saying I espouse that belief, but when you increase the convenience factor of something like littering, people will do it more often. When it hurts people's pocketbooks to litter, they do it less. Take, for example, plastic grocery bags. Everyone knows plastic grocery bags create a huge waste problem and a little bit of thoughtfulness (bringing reusable bags with you) can mitigate the amount of bags used. However, it wasn't until we started charging a fee for grocery bags that usage numbers dropped significantly.
It saves taxpayers and sellers a boatload of money compared to paying for proper employees with health insurance, mileage reimbursement, etc. to clean up their streets / source their raw material / deal with their waste.
Parks and community centers aren't designed for the purpose of making money, either, but we generally expect the people cleaning their toilets to have solid benefits.
>It's like a metaphorical form of picking up loose change that others have dropped and deemed not worth their time to pick up.
How is that different from the gig economy?