WHEN I was a young kid we competed to see who could take back the most pop bottles to the corner shop for the refund.

Although this involved only pennies, most of us immediately spent it on buying sweets from the same shop.

As well as being an early introduction to very basic entrepreneurship, it instilled a life-long willingness to recycle (even if we didn’t call it that back then).

Fast forward to 2017 with its massive problems of plastic waste, litter and the threat to the environment and there’s now a campaign to introduce a deposit and refund scheme on plastic bottles.

It actually makes all sorts of sense, just requiring a slight adjustment to our way of thinking.

Such a scheme would prevent an estimated four million plastic bottles from entering the oceans every week in the UK. 

So let’s all back this very simple but effective scheme.