RECLAIMING WASTE PRODUCTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 1 July 1927, Page 8

RECLAIMING WASTE PRODUCTS.

? STRIKING RESULTS. AVhen the by-ways of industry aw studied equally with the highways, it will surprise very many to find how important and increasing a part in British trade and manufacture is l taken by what may broadly be termed industries of reclamation. The proud claim of the Ciheago pork packer that he canned everything of the pig but its squeal is instinctively and in essence that of every factory-owner and manufacturer who seeks to win wealth from waste, riches and residuals. Though the specific term “residuals” is usually limited to the gas industry, it is far from being the only one. that is helped bv the turning to profitable use of by-products, or what used to be sweepingly termed “waste.” The waste paper basket is not to be treated despite fully, for its contents are saleable to those merchants who wish to turn them to use once more. The self-styled “practical man” — usually the most unpractical outside his own little narrow dug-out groove—• is apt to put all such considerations aside by recalling Jonathan Swift’s Lilliputian scientist, who professed to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.

RUBBER, WOOD AND COAiL. In the main, therefore, and as far as British industries are concerned, the cases of rubber and 1 coal can bo considered without forgetting the older special example afforded by wood. Or the two first, mentioned, that which reveals what can fairly be called a romance of trade is the reclaimed rubber industry, as this brings out of rubbish of almost indescribable variety material of daily value to the community in the most diverse ways. A concrete example of what is be in g increasingly done in this direction will furnish a more complete illustration than a column of vague descriptions. Messrs. James Ferguson and Sons, in their Lea Park Works, collect at the outset their semi-raw material from every quarter. It ranges from boot heels to bus tyres, broken hosepipes and rubber rings from old pickle jars to rubber parings from costlv motor tubes, teats off babies’ feeders) to shattered shock-absorbers from our greatest battleships. Mingle these with cycle tyres and tubes, railway buffer blocks, carriage door springs, billiard cushions, bathing goloshes and rubber soles, and 1 one sees in the mass the miscellaneous rubber waste to which resiliency, or some other temporarily lost property, has to be restored.

ANILINE DYESTUFFS. Let one turn from rubber waste to eoal-gas residuals, and the same beneficent effect of reclamation of rubbish through industry is made manifest. In the matter of coal, this is shown not only in the production of coke, which has always lieen a marketable commodity, but in the far more pictures>que production of colour. An iUustrartion of the first phase has been drawn from, soutli-western Inn don; one of the second: shall he taken from northwestern England. “Aniline” is> in strictness a mis nomer when applied to dyestuffs. It is not. of itself a dyestuff, but an intermediate in one process of dealing with coal. There came a happy accident, yet an accident which revolutionised the colour industry.

This derivative from coal tar, when being experimented with bv an 18-year-old pupil of the Royal College of Chemistry, who thought' he could obtain from it, miinine. developed a purole colour, the first “aniline dye” to bo discovered; and its later developments are matters not only of industrial history, but of dailv observation.

DISCOVERY OF GLYCERINE. Tit© romantic story of the discovery of glycerine in the waste products of soap-making, which had long been allowed to flow into the Thames, with the result of adding greatly to the national wealth, and not a little, through the medium of high explosives, to the national defence, has often been told. Even the smaller phases of successful efforts at reclamation are full «f suggestive interest. The great rail-wav systems utilise what is derived from the cotton waste. .used’ by engine drivers to wipe oily hands, and turn it into soft soap. Briquettes for briskening fires, are made from town dust heaps. Of all apparently waste products, what less useful would our old friend tbe “practical man” adduce that loud applause at public, meetings? l r et Afr. Gladstone—and he spoke on such a point with unchallenged- authoritv—once observed,' ‘The orator takes'up his audience in vapour what he returns to them in flood.” Oration making like oakum picking, i R to-day a dwindling commodity, but the long suc-ess of each is ‘testimony to the value of the industries of reclamation.