Bottling a Fortune

When some saw the empty glass bottles littering Moscow’s streets, they might have seen it as an indication of despair-drinking brought on by the global recession.

But Leonid Konovalov saw opportunity.

Reuters reports that Konovalov, once homeless, began collecting the bottles last year when the market turned south. And there were a lot of bottles -- hundreds of thousands of bottles.

He told Reuters, "Russians are drinking a little bit more due to the crisis, and this helped me get out of the rubbish dump."

Konovalov collected 2,000 bottles a day, each of which was worth 6 cents when he turned it in. Konovalov then invested the money in the stock market.

With a little nudge from his grandkids, Konovalov, who has been homeless for 20 years, has struck it rich as a trader. His first trade was a $74,000 share purchase. We don't know in which company he invested, but if he gets wiped out, he can always start again at the bottom of the (rubbish) heap.

Photo courtesy James Cridland via Flickr.