‘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.