MSL's Instant Replay: did greed kill a good idea?

At the rate of 25 losing instant tickets to 1 fresh $1 ticket, the idea of helping the environment while giving you the chance to win money is a genius, thought the Massachusetts State Lottery. The amount of dead ticket trash recycled, plus the ability for ticket scavengers to win at least something for their rooting the barrels at convenience stores, benefitted everyone.

Unfortunately, when people began to bring in wheelbarrows and cases of losing tickets, the novelty wore off. One book of 300 fresh $1 tickets required 7500 losing tickets, and some people walked away with several books, only to regenerate new losing ticket trash and recycle those tickets for more new $1 tickets...so the MSL cut the vicious cycle of greed and said, "sorry, no Instant Replay for 2007, because it costs us too much to maintain the program."

Instead of giving away $1 instant tickets, they could have given away Lottery novelties and gift cards, and other more useful things, but it looks like greed on the part of players trumped the nice idea of recycling trash.