RICH RUBBISH

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 56, 28 November 1924, Page 9

RICH RUBBISH

UTILISATION OF FACTORY WASTE. The modern manufacturer and the scientific chemist, in combination, have turned many things that were formerly tho most worthless waste of tho factory into valuable sources of profit and employment. There is, in fact, no such thing as rubbish nowadays (writes James H. Young in “Chambers’s Journal”) A well-known Midlothian firm of paper manufacturers 'has perfected a process for making from various waste products of the company’s mills a material called ind unite, which can be used instlead of vulcanite or ebonite, and which is in some ways superior to them for electrical works. A sharp-witted American has discovered a silver mine in the waste products of the big kinema studios. Four ounces or more or silver are used in the making of every film, and until quite recently flwo of those ounces went into the sewers when tho film was completed/. (Now the silver is recovered and sent/ to the mint to bo turned into dollars.

Timo was when the cotton-grower, looked upon the cotton seed as an insuffer, able nuisance, to bo got rid of at trouble and expense. It has become now, through chemistry, the basis of a whole catalogue of activities known as tJio cot-ton-seed oil industries. Sawdust, too, has a romance of its own. The onetime despised particles of sawdust are ndw more valuable than solid tijnber. By the uso of hydraulic pressure and intense heat, the particles are formed into a solid mass capable of being moulded into any shape and of receiving a brilliant polish. An inventor has also dis-, covered how sawdust can bo utilised to make artificial wood. A mixture consisting of sawdust, together with chalk and some chemicals, is subjected to very heavy pressure, and the result is a substance possessing all the qualities of real timber. It can be planed, sawed, bored, nailed, painted, stained, or polished, and submitted to "every process of carpentry or manufacture to which real wood is subjected. It will not deteriora-fe in water, and on account of the chemicals it contains is impervious A' Manchester scientist has discolored that, by mixing leather waste with a small percentage of rubber, and vulcanising by means of the new process, a new leather, which the inventor claims to be two and a half times as durable as ordinary leather, is produced at about one-third of the cost.