Hands off my empty plastic bottles!

‘Where are my empty plastic bottles?’ I ran around the house screaming, after discovering my stash had disappeared.

The government in Ireland has done something with the recycling laws that has made people into wild-eyed scavengers. It has introduced a scheme whereby you can feed all your empty bottles and cans into a machine in the supermarket that crushes them down and spits out a voucher – by which I mean about 20 small plastic water bottles, for example, makes you two or three euros, which is enough for a coffee, a sandwich or some money off your shopping bill.

It’s not really a lot, obviously, but it’s just enough money to have made people lose their minds over it.

Lads can be seen rifling through public bins on high streets. Because I’m thrifty and like a bargain, I can be seen down the Centra in our West Cork village with bags full of these bottles I’ve collected, feeding them into the machine and gasping with delight when I get my slip of paper with a few euros on it.