WAR AGAINST WASTE

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 May 1928, Page 10

WAR AGAINST WASTE

LONDON FACTORY SECRETS. Housewives in England who save for the rag-and-bonc man the discarded odds-and-ends of the home; tailors, dressmakers, and milliners, who gathei up the waste clippings in their workshops, and hospitals and institutions that collect tinfoil, all help to feed an industry of which comparatively little is known. Therefore, it is of interest to take a peep into an East London factory which is a model in what is commonly called Ilie waste trade. For 50 years the owners of the factory have been engaged in business at Hacknew Wick, with a slogan of Buy everything and waste nothing.” To-day they have the largest clearing house of its kind in existence, with trading connection all over the world. . Of the firm’s 500 employees, the majority arc girls, who handle in the respective departments cloth and cotton clippings, wo,rn-out garments, and old rags. Working over large baskets, and moving in and out between sacks, strung up with open mouths to yardarms, these girls work as quickly at picking out clothes as pickers in hopfields. Simply by th© touch of the finger they sort out the different textures, and in the end sacks of materials of uniform quality and dye colour are ready for bailing and numbering. These bales are then placed in warehouses ready for shipment abroad ami to the mills of Yorkshire. In recent years Australia, Italy and Czecho-Slo-vakia. have competed with home manufacturers in making new clothes from unused and screened clippings. Systemically each warehouse is replenished according to official classification, cotton ready for dispatch to the paper mills; leather to the tanning factories and the rougher waste to other destinations. The most interesting part of the works is the plant, dealing with all classes of non-ferrous metals. Dumps that have accumulated are periodically dealt with, and as the mixed material is separated, copper and lead wires go to one department; brass, bronze and aluminium to another, and the heavier metals to be trimmed ready for the smelting furnaces.

The garding of the metals is of importance, and in this task the experts have the assistance of well-trained girls, who, with uncanny judgment, assemble all sorts of articles in order of quality ready for the final examination. Furnaces, specially tempered to receive different charges, are fired from outside, and particular care is taken in the preparation of new. alloys.

To enable a metal to retain its virtue up to a required percentage, some virgin metal is mixed in the smelting. When the molten metal is run into the moulds a sample is sent to the laboratory and assayed. A thorough test is made, and when this proves satisfactory the moulds are tipped and numbered in stacks ready for sale.

One of the most interesting experiments shown to the writer, who made a toulr of the premises, was the method by which white metal is reclaimed from locomotive axle-boxes. These were heated up to a certain temperature, and when brought out into the colder atmosphere the ingredient it was desirerd to extract was displayed in its true colour. Since the war the firm have handled thousands of tons of shell cases, and some of these, together with heaps of rifle bullets, still litter the floors. The most valuable property in the bullet is a. tiny piece of lead in the cap, which is extracted by the operation of a. pe-culiarly-designed machine. The bullet is slipped in through a mouthpiece, and as it slides down it is cut open in three parts by knives, the lead, which is automatically knocked out, dropping into a cup.

“It is remarkable what properties tinfoil contains,” remarked one of the directors, when conducting the visitor through many stalls where neatlydressed and machine-rolled bundles of silver paper were pigeon-holed. Huhdreds of balls of tinfoil received from hospitals are unrolled weekly, and each sheet, whether from cigarette packets or chocolate boxes, is graded and eventually sent away in crates to be melted and purified. Massive ship’s propellers, motorcar parts, and the bruised-up scraps from engine and machine shops are all utilised, and even old batteries, when treated under varying heats, yield a substance resembling red lead. So complete is the organisation of the whole concern that from the moment a load is registered on the weighbridge the material, however widely distributed, is recorded as it passes through the many processes until fin ally invoiced by departmental clerks in new and refined forms on barges which leave the wharfside. From start to finish a relentless war against waste proceeds inside the factory.