TINS ARE NOT TIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 51, 28 August 1940, Page 11

TINS ARE NOT TIN

NOT WANTED IN BINS

YESTERDAY'S COLLECTION

The National Council which is directing the Dominion campaign. for the collection of waste materials and the Wellington committee, too, have repeatedly stated that they do not want at present any but non-ferrous metals. "Non-ferrous" means not iron or iron alloys. They have stated that they want "tin"—the metal tin—but not tins.

One could be pardoned if one believed that such is the standard of education and common sense in New Zealand that people would know that tins—for tobacco, cigarettes, jam, treacle, kerosene, barley sugar, and all the other tins that everyone handles every day—are made of thin steel sheet with an extremely thin protection of real tin each to prevent rust or corrosion under ordinary handling and storing conditions. But it was made clear yesterday that a lot of people do not know any such elementary thing, and so hundreds and hundreds of tins were dropped into the collection bins in the city.

The only "tin" that the average householder is likely- to be able to contribute is in squeezed-out tooth paste, shaving cream, and cosmetic tubes. Pure tin runs very high today, over £200 a ton, and every half-ounce or quarter-ounce is worth while, but the tin coating of tins cannot be recovered in New Zealand.

Tins (from tobacco and treacle to barley sugar) only clutter up the bins and make unnecessary work for the sorters. No metal which rusts —surely everyone knows what rust is—is wanted in those bins.

Yesterday the Lambton bins, at the station and at the tram terminus, drew blanks, but there were quite good results at, the Post Office (when a few hundred tins had been picked out and put aside for dumping) and very good results at Courtenay Place, where the bin had to be emptied four times during the day. Brass and copper came along well, about 3001b altogether, and there v/as a fair quantity of aluminium, lead, and odds and ends of zinc, alloys—and tins, of course, plus one double armful of hoop iron.

The collection committee wants any metal that does not rust. It does not want tins.