I HAVE been reading The Weekly Times since I was a child.

Recycling really was alive and well back then, but it wasn't talked about. People just did it.

My grandparents bought The Weekly Times every week, but we didn't get it until the following week, so we were always a week behind - not that we minded.

I dare say in many families the paper had a third visit - to the outside toilet!

Does that mean it was re-recycled?

Or maybe it was used to wrap up the vegetable peelings?

Empty soft-drink bottles were taken back to the shop from where they were purchased and a 5 cent refund was given.

If they hadn't been purchased there, as was the case after my brother and I had spent a day at the races picking up all the empties, the shopkeeper would insist we spend the proceeds in their milk bar.

Of course, we absolutely hated having to buy so many lollies from the bottle money!

The milk bottles were also returned for refilling.

Whoever invented plastic has a lot to answer for.

Have people forgotten the saying "good things come in glass"?

There is so much plastic in the supermarkets these days and yet the consumer is the one made to feel guilty about accepting a plastic bag to put his or her purchases in.

I can remember my mother going into the local general store where the biscuits were in four-pound tins.

She would ask for half a pound of this and half a pound of that, and they'd be put in brown paper bags, not packaged in more plastic.

Lollies would also be on display in their boxes, and what a nightmare for the shopkeeper when a child came in and wanted one of those, two of them, and would proceed to place them in a small white paper bag.

Could this be another contributing factor to the obesity crisis, the fact lollies are now packaged in large family-sized bags.

Is it any wonder many of us have become cynical about the whole recycling green movement?

Deirdre Collins, Mount Gambier, South Australia