Pretty close to pointless - the trucks still need to run and the marginal cost of a truck carrying an additional can is almost certainly way the hell less than 5 cents. Meanwhile, we're paying these people way less than minimum wage. It still doesn't seem like that part of it makes any sense.
The trucks will just be going to the new distribution center instead of the old one. Also, the article points out that this doesn't decrease spending since the city would otherwise make the money from the stolen cans.
When you put refuse to the curb, it's generally regarded as discarded. That word -- stolen -- doesn't mean what you think it means.
If the collection is partly subsidized by the presence of recyclables in that refuse, does that change things? I don't know enough about trash collection to know to what degree that's the case (I would expect it to vary by municipality).
Not pointless: less curbside pickup volume per truck means you can run with less residential-serving trucks (less time trundling back and forth to a big recycling distribution center).
It's a kind of ingenious way to decrease spending on municipal recycling collection, levying it on the consumers of the products apt for recycling directly. I actually wish the deposit were a little bit larger. What they do is enormously backbreaking and demoralizing work.