TINFOIL.

Franklin Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 40, 4 April 1928, Page 2

TINFOIL.

A GREAT INVENTION. What great man, or woman, was :t who first discovered the virtues in. tinfoil? Though he or she be without a name, the hospitals have reason for thankfulness to that unrevealed personality (says the London Daily Telegraph.) The war first taught us that fortunes may lie in unconsidered waste : the scrap-heap of articles abandoned and turned to use bore some part in the munitioning of our armies. It has been roughly estimated that 10.000,000 people in England smoke four cigarettes a day. This may not be statistically exact, but, assuming its correctness then the 40,000,000 cigarettes consumed each day require two tons of tinfoil for their packing. It is stated by the secretary of the General Lyingin Hospital in South-East London, that the price received from the smelters for a hundredweight of tinfoil will maintain a mother and her baby for a week.

A single day's consumption of tinfoil by the cigarette packers, if only all of it could be garnered, would consequently maintain.4o mothers and 40 babies for a full week, leaving the balance from the remaining six days of the week to provide for patients in proportionate numbers in other hospitals. Here is wealth, and in it the capacity to do much good. It needs only a little forethought by smokers, in storing the tinfoil wrappers in the pocket, and, of course, organised collection, to make that wealth fruitful. Children are avid collectors for the hospitals. No doubt many regard their'persistent requests for the "silver paper" as a nuisance, but the trifling gift is well worth making. It is doubly helpful, for there is great fun to the small people in seeing the ball grow constantly bigger.

A smelter, however, gives warning that the fashioning of balls of the foil should be discouraged. These have to be unravelled, and the labour thus given to them reduces the price that can be paid. Tinfoil should be kept smooth and flat, in bundles. There is no real trouble in saving it, for deposit in the first hospital box passed, or for the clamourous children. The resulting benefit collectively far outmeasures the effort.