A nice little earner if you had the bottle ...

BACk in the Fifties there was no agonising over bottle deposit schemes — we just got on with it. Two old pence per bottle (about 1p) was well worth picking up. It worked well, but it was wide open to a bit of sleight of hand. A pal of mine, Dave Almond, who lived in the next street in Darwen in the East Lancashire cotton belt, told me the other day how he used to make a regular little earner out of the empties some 60 years ago. The grimy corner shop would have been shut down these days. The cat was often asleep on the boiled ham; potatoes and carrots rolled around the floor and the place hadn’t had a spring clean since well before the war. By the battered front door was an old crate holding empty sterilised milk bottles. Dave would pick up a bottle and walk cheerily into the shop. He would hand it over and the shopkeeper would give him tuppence. The transaction was always rounded off with the chap wiping his nose on his sleeve and telling Dave: ‘Ere, shove it i’ that crate bi t’front dooer.’ ‘No problem,’ said my pal. That’s how recycling worked in the old days.

Harold Heys, Darwen, Lancs.