When I was in 5th grade, I spend all of the breaks collecting milk- and lemonade bottles sold by our school cafeteria. If I recall correctly, they had a redempt

When I was in 5th grade, I spend all of the breaks collecting milk- and lemonade bottles sold by our school cafeteria. If I recall correctly, they had a redemption value of 25 Pfennig (0.25 Deutsche Mark, roughly 0.12 EUR). I stored them in my locker and returned them at the end of the week. I was able to make around 20 DM (10 EUR) per week, or 80 DM per month, sometimes over 100 DM, which was a monstrous amount of money for 10 years old me. There were a few kids doing this, so you had to be quick and know the locations where many bottles were to be found. The best spots were usually the places where the teenage "cool" kids who considered returning bottles below their dignity were hanging out, and you had to be brave enough to approach them. To this day, I remember the pure joy of finding a motherload of bottles, maybe up to 10 at once, and always leave bottles on the top of garbage cans in the city for the homeless :)