It's nice that the streets are clean, but maybe we'd be doing better if we just gave those people cleaning jobs that they can do plus some support with staying in the job, and accommodation, and medical help if needed.

Sure, but that's not trivial. E.g. in many cases these are people who might be unable/unwilling to work any kind of regular or fixed hours, so making this a regular-employment job would hurt those people.

It's one of the most successful top->down redistribution projects.

And at the same time there's no tax question and the rate of fraud has been very low.

Last time I was in Germany, I saw a few homeless men sitting at the side of the road, asking a family who were walking to church if they could have the empty plastic bottles. All three of the children rolled their empty bottles across the street to the homeless men. They had a box with quite a few empty plastic water bottles in it.

One of many things that impressed me in Germany.

Actually it is not just the homeless guys who pick up the bottles. I've seen all sort of people picking up the empty bottles here.

One of my flatmates did it for a while to pad his unemployment money. It's probably not that normal to do, but anywhere else I've lived this would be unthinkable.

You can make a lot of money with it if you do it in areas where the homeless rate is low. Especially in the first years when it wasn't that common, I knew someone who made more than 40€ per hour with a good strategy of where to go. Best thing about it is that it's tax free and legal.

I see more rubbish in parks in Copenhagen, with a deposit sysetm, than I used to in London, where there is no deposit system.

Homeless people pick up the beer bottles, and cola cans, but they won't collect the wine bottles, or the packaging from the snacks, but Danes seem to leave this in the park with the bottles.