WASTE RECLAMATION IN AUSTRALIA

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24150, 8 January 1944, Page 2

WASTE RECLAMATION IN AUSTRALIA

SAVING OF 20 PER CENT. IN LEATHER SYDNEY. Dec. 31. Australia's waste leather is to be reclairhed at a factory being established in Melbourne, and equipped with expensive imported machinery. Hitherto, more than 20 per cent, of leather produced here has been wasted, and eventually burned. Now many thousands of pounds’ worth will be saved. Scrap will come from boot factories and other leather goods manufactories. and will be made into leather board, previously imported at £IOO a ton, to stiffen loecaps and heels. In the pulping process to be used, the leather will be impregnated with flax fibre, which itself is salvaged. Each year 3,000.000 pairs of boots are made for the forces, and civilian consumption is 13.000,000 pairs. Recently 1,000,000 pairs were sent to India. A Melbourne firm salvages 20,000 recording discs a year and recovers 90 per cent, of the butyl acetate coating. Air from a sealed room is drawn off and put through a Heath Robinson process which makes it yield up the b.a. in the smell which previously annoyed the neighbours. And in a country factory which makes paper pulp they trap the smoke and make it disgorge 80 tons of chemicals a month.