The result was that our stone villa had no growing graveyard of bottles, however hard we played. There was a neatness, a spare efficiency about this. No clutter, no bulky ware being hauled in from far away to package the local product. The wine came straight from the hillside where the vines grew, with a brief spell in the winemaker's cellars, on to our tables.

Fine for the village but, you may quarrel, this won't make sense in urban Australia. We need swift containment of product to move it about and keep it clean. Perhaps, but we also need ways to reduce clutter and the nineties are ramming home as the eighties didn't that you can't simply take on a convenient system because it appears to cost less in isolation. Products must be valued 'from cradle to grave' or from the time their ingredients are wrenched from nature to the day they are finally disposed of. Then you get a more sobering picture of price.

That's why it can be good to require money to be deposited on bottles and some other containers. It does two things. First it reminds of the expense of creating the object. Secondly it makes us provide labour to help keep our environment free of rubbish. We do this as an unthinking contribution.

I am aware that there are those in industry that argue that the costs of container deposits as a scheme to run is too high. This report has provided counter arguments and well- marshalled evidence on the other side. This is just the kind of thoughtful material we require to resolve the debate and construct useful legislation.

In the last two years councils all over Australia have revolutionised their approach to recycling. But still the mounds grow, still the landfills brim with garbage. What we need is a substantial diminution of the load of containers coupled with a switch to industry that is truly productive of what we need. Real wealth not ephemera.

When I was small and my family was badly off I used to scour the streets of London for bottles taking them to the shops for pennies. The change mounted up and often came to enough to buy our dinner. I don't imagine that container legislation will become a branch of the economy to aid the disadvantaged but I do believe it will galvanise the young and willing who are keen for that little bit extra.

If it does I hope that our coastline will one day look like another European landscape (other than Tuscany) that impressed me. The walks along the ancient hills of West Wales are not only breathtakingly beautiful, they are also completely free of rubbish. This is so rare a sight I can only promise you it's as uplifting as a new spring. Perhaps this report can help make such a sight universal.

Robyn Williams
Broadcaster and Science Journalist