Oh, no. I'm quite aware. The companies that can do it have a large enough effect in my life as it is. I really do not wish for scammers, random trolls, foreign government or home invader (tracking where you are based on purchases) to join them.
Right now I can make it hard for the big players by using the right tools and services. This would make it completely impossible.
How the hell are scammers, random trolls, or foreign governments going to do that with a token that says the date when you bought something? Especially if the key to decrypt the token is held by the DoE!
If the key is only held by the doe then how are you ever going to get that deposit? Bring your trash to them? If not then everyone needs to have access, which means no encryption.
One could of course feasibly leave out who bought the thing. To prevent fraud though you would probably have to save what the thing is (otherwise someone will just produce trash in China with valid token IDs from the database just to get the deposit) and having a database of that is in it self a very bad thing for businesses at least. You don't want your competitors to know exactly how much you are selling, otherwise you will definitely get bought out at your lowest point.
Maintaining such a database would be a nightmare too, and all that just to make sure the tokens do fall in value with inflation? I don't see the point really. Either fix the value for a couple of years, or let it rise through inflation that would incentivize the collection of old garbage at least.
You are right, machines could work for smaller/standardized stuff 🤔
As for scammers, since kind of fake recall where you have to for some reason pay something in advance probably. But trust scammers and grifters to figure something out, they always do.