"WASTE PAPER."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 280, 25 November 1937, Page 24

"WASTE PAPER."

SALVAGE IN LONDON.

HUGE OFFICIAL DISCARD.

BOUGHT BT PUU» MERCHANTS.

Whitehall, home of the great departments and offices of the British Government, discards an average of 10,000 tons of paper every year. Bills, Acts, and copies of Hansard are printed in profusion, as well as documents, cards, and forms. When they have served their purpose they are cast on one side, but they are not labelled purely as "waste." The value of 1000 tons of this type of paper is £1500, so-that there is a substantial return to Whitehall..

Paper merchants do not regard this paper from the Government offices as waste. "The bulk of the paper is in the form of printed documents, cards, and forms which had to be prepared and filled in," one merchant has stated. "They served their purposes and their day, and were essential to the departmental business. When obsolete they are resold through the stationery office at the ordinary market rates, and the majority of the paper is repulped. "In the case of more confidential documents which are no longer necessary, a 'shredding , process is employed, and they arc destroyed under official

supervision. There really should be little criticism, for in these days of scientific salvage the proportion of used paper which has no value is remarkably small. On the figures which were made known to the Select Committee, it would seem that the Government Departments have done very well and to have traded their 'waste' in a highly satisfactory manner. "There was a time, not eo very long ago, when waste paper had no commercial value. All that has been changed. Reclaimed paper is graded and paid for according to quality. In the better classes of paper, for instance, the chemical wood is salved. Nowadays, with up-to-date and enlightened methods of salvage, practically every piece of paper has its commercial value, and in most districts all is reclaimed, with the exception of that which goes into the dustbin and automatically finds its way into the incinerator." s ■ If the argument that all obsolete paper is waste held good, the London Telephone Service would be faced by an appalling problem of conscience. Four times every year there is an issue of 850,000 telephone directories to London area users alone. A to K goes out in February and August and L to Z in May and November.

In all, 3,400,000 telephone directories, weighing CflOO tons, are given to subscribers in London alone every year. The postman who delivers them collects the old books, and these, in monumental stacks, are sent to the stationery office for disposal to pulp merchants at good prices.