NATIONAL WASTE.

Marlborough Express, Volume LIII, Issue 187, 4 July 1919, Page 3

NATIONAL WASTE.

NEW ZEALAND'S RAW

MATERIAL

Nature had been very generous to New Zealand, remarked Mr G. T. Booth m the course of an address to the Workers' Educational Association at Christen urch. Not only had she given them a fertile soil and a genial climate, but she had endowed them with vast, supplies of raw material for wealth production in their forests and coal measures. "We have," Mr Booth continued, "wilfully destroyed millions of pounds' worth of. forest. Great areas of it are gone for ever, and only a few years' supply remains. But even this we are persistently destroying. Where milling is carried on under State regulations, of every tree that is felled only about onetl.iird is converted to use as timber. The other two-thirds is wasted, and this should not bs. We import hundreds of diousands of pounds' worth of paper every year, which we could produce ourselves from our forest waste. Half the silk of commerce is made from wood, as.well as an almost endless variety of other useful and valuable commodities. Our remaining forest should not be destroyed. It should-be conserved by scientific methods and would,then become a permanent and never failing source of wealth. And what about our coal ? Of every, ton we waste equivalent to 18ewt or 90 per cent by our crude and improper methods* of use. ' It is estimated by a competent authority that Great Britain wastes £100,000,000 worth of coal per year. On the same btssis our loss must run into some m-illions yearly, which might be -saved by scientific treatment. Coal, like timber, contains a wonderful variety of valuable constituents, nearly the whole of which are lost, when' it is burned in open nre3. or furnaces. Germany can teach us very useful lessens on agriculture, the conservation of forests svnd the. proper utilisation of coal."