Unfortunately I moved out of Germany but I loved this system. In Dresden-Neustadt [quite funky party areal], it was quite common to leave beer bottles or alcopop cans neatly outside of the trash bins. So people who make money from collecting them don't have to dig in trash. Pure humanity.

I used to work at FAANG there, one of the managers was a fun guy. For a month he committed to do the same thing as the people who collect cans - every 04:00am he went around town, collecting bottles and cans. Turns out you can easily make 100-200eur a day with this. But it's a highly competitive business.