Aluminum recyclers have no problems with the cans. They are made from nearly pure aluminum, as are the pull tops. It’s the storage and sanitary issues that would dissuade them. If they really wanted to raise money they’d take the the cans. In states with can deposits they could make much more money than the cans are worth.
There was a story arc on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series which posited that the entire world’s economy actually runs on cereal box tops.
There’s also Box Tops for Education, which has gone down the QR code road.
I know of an elementary school that figured out how much 1,000,000 pop can tabs would weigh, and set out to collect them so kids could see what a million of something looked like, and then sold the aluminum and used the money for the school.
I thought can lids with pull tops were made of a different alloy than the rest of the can. You’d think that would make a difference in how they are recycled, but perhaps they just dillute the recycled cans with enough new aluminum that it doesn’t.
Guys can we can it, so to speak?
The pull tabs thing is only tangentially related to the OP.