GOLD IN THE DUST-BIN.

Mataura Ensign, 17 June 1914, Page 7

GOLD IN THE DUST-BIN.

♦ A scheme has l just been propounded' by Commander Dixon. R.N., before the London Society to utilise the waste of the dust-lbin, (writes a, correspondent to , the 'Sydney Daily Telegraph'). At the] present time enormous sums; ard paid , for the carting and disposal of thei rubbish. In London alone it is esti-j mated that the cost- of doing so is' nearly £140,000 per annum. In 1910 the amount of household waste disposed of by London borough councils amounted to 900,000 tons, and at the present time it is considerably over 1,000,000 tons.

let much of this waste is exceedingly valuable. Hundreds of tons of waste paper are destroyed, and to-day the selling price of the paper is 8s 6d per cwt. Tons of old tin boxes are thrown away. The tin with which. they are coated is worth £226 a ton, and the sheet iron of which) they are mainly composed is the purest' iron known, and can be sold at a high ' price. | It is estimated that the yearly quan- j titv of house refuse collected amounts' in London to 300 tons per thousand of \ the population, or about 1,500,000 tons for all London. The analysis of the material showed' that it contained about 8 per cent, or 120,000 tons of saleable material, such as paper, bottles, broken glass, tin oans ; boxes, rags, and metals. No account} is here taken of wood, shoes, hats, corks, string, and other trifles, for all of which there: is a ready market.

At) the present time contractors pre actually 'paid, in many districts, to cart .this material away. In addition to what they make; by the sale of the useful parts, they receive the money paid to theon for the carting. After the sorting there Still remains the prolem of the disposal of the usele&i and often obnoxious material. .Much of it! is taken by barge and dumped at the nearest, convenient spot, and, although out of sight of most of the population, id is a menace to the health of the .neighborhood. Commander Dixon's scheme is that the 'waste should ibe first sorted, all valuable constituents ■'being separated! and sold; the residue should then bej taken in low4ying marshland, which in j a very short time would be raised, and coultf then be cultivated, This has al- I ready been done in some districts in' the United Kingdom, notably upon the, Chatmoss estate, near Manchester. Manyi London boroughs, is well as aj number of provincial cities, have refuse ; destructors, and although, in somei cases, power is generated' by the destruction of the rubbish, undoubtedly j much valuable stuff is burned. In ad- i dition, the clinker which is derived' from the destructors is difficult! to dis-; pose off, and the dust fmm the chim- i

neys of the destructors Ibecomes a nuisance to dwellers in the surrounding districts. Many curious things are found in the refuse which from time to time comes to the destructors. At Fleetwood a 20ft whale was actually cut up and derstroyed. It might have 'been treated chemically and converted! into a! valu-. ahl© manure. 'The Glasgow tion has a ;coord of the following items which have come to the city destructor: —Fifty-six horses, 12 pigs, 4 bullocks, 3 cows, 27 tons of bad.eggs, and 1 5 tons of old books. We must not conclude from the last two items that Glasgow possesses more had ieggs than books. No city in the world, perhaps, has such a valuable method of dealing with its house refuse as New York. Twenty years ago the city paid £2500 a year for the privilege of having itsl'refuse carted away. Now contractors actually pay for the privilege of so doing. In one ivear the city received frorni the "scow-trimming" privilege, as it is called, nibout £IO,OOO free labor and more than £BOOO in cash. The most important item of the "scow-trimming" recovery consisted] of hones and grea.se. This is now withdrawn, brifore the material is sold to the contractors,, and although fully £IO,OOO worth of hones and fat is a:l>straoted' before the refuse is sold, the city stiß receives another £IO,OOO per annum for what is left.