NOSTALGIA gets a bad name.

"Back in my day," is normally the opening line to a pun or the preface to some rose-tinted anecdote that fades when a light is shone on it.

It increasingly feels, though, that "back in the day" is a shining example to today.

Half of parents, we were this week told, worry their school-age children are addicted to computer games, leading to a disruption in household routines. Parents say it is difficult to tear children, boys especially, away from computer games, impossible to drag them from Minecraft and towards mealtime.

The World Health Organisation, in its international classification of diseases, has included gaming disorder. To be diagnosed with gaming disorder, one must have, for at least 12 months, had "increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities."

This, it seems, is chiming with parental experience of not being able to persuade children into a bath and off to bed. Young people aged 11 to 13 are spending two and a half hours a day, on average, on computer games and nearly six hours over a weekend.

Similar headlines in 2015 told us that half of parents worried their children were addicted to screens, suggesting parental concern about games is not alleviating.

At the same time, outdoor play is the big thing. The sort of pastimes that would chime a bell with my generation and above - running about in the streets without tablets or mobile phones; making games out of sticks; idling away hours on nothing - are now valued learning experiences that are studied by academics and recommended by education experts as vital for cognitive development, imagination, dexterity, physical health and on.

Basically, while computer games have value for problem solving, creativity and entertainment, ultimately kids need the balance of being papped outdoors and left to their own devices.

Perhaps, while they're outside, they could also increase their entrepreneurial spark, improve their fitness and make themselves useful, by trotting to Sainsburys with their empty plastic bottles and aluminium drinks cans.

The supermarket has announced the launch of a reverse vending recycling scheme at its Braehead store, which lets customers swap used drinks receptacles for a coupon worth 5p per item towards their shopping.

With up to 500 recycling items permitted per visit, you're bound to keep the weans off the Playstation for a fairly decent length of time.

And wouldn't it be nostalgic? We're still waiting for Scotland to roll out its promised deposit return scheme, but in the meantime Sainsburys will hark us back to the days of saving up your glass ginger bottles and taking them to the corner shop in exchange for a shiny coin.

This respectable means of earning enough for some penny sweeties ended in 2015, its demise likely hastened by the kids being too addicted to Fortnite to keep the scheme going.

Sainsburys, on an environmental roll, is also removing plastic bags for loose fruit, vegetables and bakery items from all stores.

The 1960s saw the invention of the plastic bag as we know it today, created in Sweden and called the "the T-shirt plastic bag."

It didn't take off until the 1980s as, until then, people vastly preferred a brown paper bag.

Now, plastics are the devil and paper the much cooler, much more sustainable alternative.

Of course, reusable tote bags are really the thing but if we must go disposable, make it paper.

And make it wooden.

M&S - among others - has started giving out wooden cutlery in lieu of disposable plastic knives, forks and spoons.

We're away back to paper straws. In 1880 Marvin Stone was drinking a mint julep on a hot Washington day day - so legend goes - when his rye grass straw began to dissolve.

He invented the paper straw, which was later overthrown by the plastic straw and now, as is the circle of life, the plastic straw is being bumped for a return to paper.

Should we want really to travel backwards we could look 5000 years back to the Ancient Sumerians who submerged thin tubes made from precious metals into jars of beer.

If no one has taken the opportunity to make and market designer straws then I doubt they will be long coming.

Designer fashion is greatly preferred to high street fast fashion, a trend destroying the planet with rapidity. A return is needed and encouraged to the days of buying quality, long lasting items to be cherished and cared for.

Councils across Scotland are making car ownership less desirable with increased parking charges, lower speed limits and penalties for driving into city centres.

What's happening? We're discovering that, actually, many things from back in the day are, in fact, preferable to our modern inventions.

Let's just not get too excited about it. With Boris Johnson lurking about the country's top job, we want to return to healthier, sustainable ways. Not the class based cap doffing we've left behind.