We were tiny treasure hunters, looking in hedges, on waste ground, in abandoned buildings, deep in the woods, or in “lucky middens”. Our gold was empty Irn-Bru bottles, known as “glass cheques” because they could be cashed in for the deposit paid with every purchase. The bounty would often come in the form of a trade with local shops or the ice cream van and we would walk away with bags of sweets, crisps, and maybe a pokey hat (ice-cream cone).

But this form of recycling in Scotland is set to come to an end, marking not just a cultural shift but the loss of a potent symbol – the empty ginger bottle – and the traditions that go with it. On the stroke of midnight on Hogmanay this year, the 30p deposit or “buy back” paid on every glass bottle of manufacturer AG Barr’s soft drinks will no longer be refundable. The makers of Irn‑Bru – known as “Scotland’s other national drink” – announced last August that the cash for empties system would be abandoned as it was no longer economical to wash, sterilise and refill the bottles.

It was 1905 when the company decided to offer a halfpenny in return for its empty glass bottle – hundreds of empty crates would be taken daily to the factory to be topped back up with the fizzy stuff. For more than a century, kids would spend long summer days “looking for luckies”, and if they were really lucky they might find a shop that would trade in cash instead of goods – thus potentially raising enough money for entry into the swimming baths or the pictures.

Kids could be seen raking around, looking for the glass glint that could lead to a packet of crisps, a quarter pound of sweets or even another bottle of ginger. Grannies would save up empties and hand over a present of a shopping bag full of bottles.

The custom led to a language of its own. Aside from “glass cheques” and “luckies”, empty bottles were known as “rammies” and “gingies”, there were “elephant’s graveyards” seemingly filled with “hunners of empties” and a collector and trader was thus a “bottle merchant” or “Hector Hector bottle collector”.

By 1985, AG Barr was selling 100m glass bottles a year (although the drinks industry had begun to use aluminium cans and plastic bottles by that point) and in 2008 the bounty was raised to 30p. But production is now a 10th of what it was in that heyday and only half of those bottles are returned. The introduction in 2014 of kerbside recycling of glass in Scotland made it more convenient to chuck the bottles in the bin to be collected each week – thus prompting a decline from 65% to 57% in returns for deposits.

In the coming days, cupboards will be emptied and scrubland will be scoured across the country because, come Ne’erday, they won’t be taking back gingies anywhere any more.