A Jesmond Vale resident is petitioning local MPs to install a reverse vending recycling scheme for plastic bottles.

Annette Kearney, 55, works as a nurse at Freeman Hospital. She has posted in the Friends of Jesmond Dene Facebook group to call on people to write to the local council for a scheme that would encourage people to return used plastic bottles to shops in exchange for a small rebate.

“Remember the pop bottles we used to return to buy sweets with?” Kearney asked below the post. “It was universal in the UK to have returnable glass pop bottles either back to the shop or collected by a delivery man. Also, milk bottles were delivered and returned,” she added.

Brian Barker agreed with Kearney. He said: “A long time ago, we used to get one old penny for returning our pop bottles to the shop. If it was brought back now perhaps there would not be so much litter in the streets and parks.”

“They have been doing this in Europe for years. Why are we not doing it in Jesmond?” another Facebook user, Louise Carling, commented.

Every Saturday morning, Kearney goes down the Ouseburn with the park rangers to pick up litter. “The littering is very depressing and neverending. Mainly bottles and cans and plastic glasses,” she told JesmondLocal.

Kearney has written to Nick Brown, a parliament member for Newcastle upon Tyne East to come up with the suggestion.

She also posted it on several websites, such as the Green Pary pages, to ask everyone to write to their parliament members. “There are hundreds of likes and shares. Obviously, there is a massive demand for it,” she said.

Now, Kearney is planning to write to more parliament members. She is also trying to galvanise people around the world to take part in this plan.

Sainsbury’s has taken its reverse vending recycling trial to its Braehead superstore in Glasgow, Scotland in 2019. JesmondLocal phoned the Sainsbury’s stores in Newcastle, including the Sainsbury Local outside West Jesmond Metro station, and the one on Haddricks Mill Road Local. The operators said the trial has not been embarked in these stores.

There was a recycling machine in the Sainsbury’s Newcastle Northumberland Street Local. The shop assistant told JesmondLocal that before the pandemic, the customers could put cans or bottles into this machine and get a 5p Sainsbury’s coupon for each can or bottle.

However, since the cans/bottles could be high-risk carries of the virus, the trial was suspended.

Kearney hopes the scheme could be restarted after the pandemic – and is expanded.

“Other countries have been doing it and we really are way behind on this. I want to emphasise reusable over recycling is what we should aim for,” she said.

“I’m a keen cyclist and walker,” Kearney said. “I reduce flying and car use to reduce my carbon footprint.”

Inspired by Greta Thurnberg, David Attenborough and Chris Packham, she joined the Green Party in 2019. “I’m appalled we’re in the middle of mass extinction and climate change and we really need action,” she said.