SALVAGE OF WASTE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 111, 13 May 1942, Page 6

SALVAGE OF WASTE

ITS IMPORTANCE

EXAMPLE OF BRITAIN

The collection of waste paper in Wellington is improving, but it has a long way to go to be a really good job. Householders are the greatest wasters of paper that should be recovered, for though their individual contributions would be small, in the( total they would be very great. Pupils of the nearest school will collect parcels on request. How seriously the collection of once used paper is taken in Britain is indicated by a series of clippings kindly sent, to "The Post" by a Brooklyn resident. Under the new Waste Paper Order anyone who burns, destroys, or disposes of waste paper and cardboard otherwise than through a collector or buyer, or who mixes waste paper with refuse in a bin, is liable to a fine of £100. In Britain it is an offence now to throw away a tram or a bus ticket, or an empty cigarette or tobacco packet; in railway carriages such waste must be put into containers or left on the seats for easy collection. A round has been made of chemists for out-of-date prescriptions; libraries have been cleared up; business firms have again been appealed to to sort out old records, ledgers, account books, statements, correspondence, chits, and records forgotten toy the oldest members of the staff. (There are still hundreds of tons of this stuff in Wellington offices.) The provision for fines of £100.was balanced, by an offer of a total of £20,000 in prize money, to be shared among 20 areas in Britain, half the prize money to go to war funds and half to local charities. WARNING OF ACUTE SHORTAGE HERE. Britain needs recovered paper for direct munition production as well as for reuse in paper making. Some of the direct war purposes are: 25----pounder shell cups, mine components, mortar shell carriers, aero engine gaskets, shell fuse assemblies, shell washers, rifle and small shell boxes, cartridge wads. etc. Here, in the main, paper is used for remaking, mixing with what pulp is available, and for certain munitions in one form or another. Because paper has been, and still is, as things go, cheap, it has been scandalously wasted —and still is. Shopkeepers are appealing, with some success only, to people to bring baskets; the Government has directed that stationery sizes are to be cut down and the closest use made of what is used. That direction has been given because, if there is not even now a shortage that begins to hurt, that shortage will not be far ahead if waste continues. As has been emphasised more than once, the less paper used the more important paper salvage becomes, for 10 per cent, salvage of 1000 tons is 100 tons, and 10 per cent, of 100 tons is only 10 tons. There are still many people who will put bundles of paper into the nonferrous metal bins. In wet weather this is just a waste of collecting time, for the stuff goes to a messy pulp. Paper should either be taken to the depot in Lombard Street or a school telephone should be used to ask for a collector. Non-ferrous metal collection, of course, continuesBOTTLE DRIVE LATER. Bottles cannot very well be collected in a big way except in organised drives. The last was so immensely successful that only recently have the main stocks been delivered to buyers. Another drive will be organised fairly soon. A lady has written to "The Post" about medicine bottles. She has, she says, a good many, but nobody wants them; the chemists will not take them back, and bottle-oh's don't want them. Medicine bottles are, in fact, a problem to the committee. A vast number were collected during the last drive and hung fire for months. Most of them have gone out now for putting up polishes and the like. The difficulties about their reuse by chemists are the varieties in size and shape of propi'ietary line bottles, and trouble over certain sterilisation before reuse as medicine containers, or essence and similar food containers. There is a possibile reuse for any size and condition of bottle, as broken glass for remelting, but this is obvious waste if they can be reused otherwise. Medi-' cine bottles of standard size should be kept and will be collected when the next drive is held.

Rags suitable for cleaning purposes should not on any account be destroyedi The Air Force and engineering shops can use many tons of cleaning rags.