Dr Martina Devlin

Well, I just finished it.

I was sitting outdoors at a cafe in the city centre in Dublin.

It was early afternoon and I was chatting with a friend over coffee.

And all of a sudden, an arm reached out across my line of vision and seized something from our table.

And of course, I immediately thought, oh, my God, I've been robbed.

I started patting my pockets and the seat from my phone or my bag, you know, quite easily.

But to my relief, both were untouched.

So I looked around to see what had been taken.

And it was a just finished bottle of water.

And it was now in the hand of a young man in T-shirt and jeans who was walking along the pavement.

And he was scanning other tables.

And my friend and I laughed.

I said, well, look, at least he's recycling.

But it did seem brazen.

I mean, he hadn't waited for us to leave the table.

He was helping himself on the hoof.

Now, look, you know, compared to what can happen.

in sitting about in the city, it wasn't an issue, but the snatch told me something that I'd known in theory, but hadn't really thought about in practice, which was that these plastic bottles and cans, which are suitable for the deposit return scheme, have a direct monetary value and people are collecting them for that purpose.

Absolutely, or I wouldn't even have the cash.

Well, I would have recycled it.