I agree. I have no idea why refuse isn't dealt with nationally. Collections handled by local council but processing and policy dealt with nationally.

Then everything wouldn't need to be labelled with probably recyclable.

This is the answer. From the devs point of view it's getting the most value out of the product they have spent years making.

For Reddit it's a good PR move.

I don't think they will be paying anything until they implement subscriptions. They are exempt for now in exchange for removing advertising from their apps.

Once they implement subscriptions then they get income to cover the cost of the api.