DO you think your kids get it too easy, but are not sure what to do about it?

Perhaps they need an interest to get them outdoors? What about earning a few dollars on their own initiative?

If you agree, perhaps Greens MP Ian Cohen is on the right track. He wants the NSW Government to bring back bottle and can deposits, to reduce landfill, slow litter and make children more environmentally and socially aware.

''I want to see containers returned and a deposit refunded,'' the upper house MP told The Sun-Herald.

''I remember doing this as a kid in the '50s. I'd buy a can of pineapple juice with the money I got from collecting bottles at the beach.''

I don't agree with the Greens on much, but I do on this.

Like him, I was a big recycler of cans and bottles - and also lead and copper I flogged to a scrap dealer. Once you got on the prowl, you found stuff everywhere.

Eventually I hooked up a little trailer to my pushbike for the heavier items, like discarded batteries which I smashed up for the lead cores. I built the rig, with a billy-cart I'd made from timber and second-hand trolley wheels found on a dump near my Harbord beach home.

For much of my childhood my dad was a real estate agent and an electrical manufacturer. He owned a factory where by my 12th birthday I'd learnt just about every DYI skill from welding to sheetmetal/woodwork and spray-painting. I could even work a lathe.

My mates and I would use the returned container money to buy fireworks.

This was in those free and easy days

before politicians started the Nanny State by really getting stuck into turning the

populace into cotton-wool wusses, with overly protective bans on everything from backyard cracker-night bonfires to jaywalking.

I also bought exotic finches which I bred in my backyard, exhibited and sold using home-built showcages. It was very laborious, but gave me a great sense of achievement and satisfaction.

But don't expect the 10 cents/can refunds to happen overnight. South Australia has such a scheme and Cohen has put the idea to the State Parliament in a private member's bill.

Packagers and brewers are dead against the idea, claiming it would prove expensive and push up the price of bottles and cans.

But they would say that, wouldn't they?