GOLDEN RUBBISH HEAP

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3597, 1 April 1924, Page 9

GOLDEN RUBBISH HEAP

TREASURES ONCE WASTED. The suggestion made by Mr. W. T. Gordon, iti a lecture at King’s College, that pearl sncll mining in Birmingham might! be highly profitable, brings strongly to mind the fact that industrial England is strewni with golden rubbish heaps (writes ‘ T.C.8." in the Daily Mail). The rapid progress of science and invention constantly reveals new methods of putting to profitable uso material which until recently was regarded as useless waste, and the result is that vast dunps which have merely disfigured the landscape are being eagerly bought up and worked.

The pearl shell to which Mr Gordon referred consists of shells of the pearl oyster, from each of which in old days only one button could be cut. To.day every atom of the beautiful iridescent material is valuable.

At various places on the East Coast lie vast piles of ordinary limpet) shells. There is one at West Mersca which contains hundreds of tons. Recently the value 3f these shells aspoultrv grit has been realised, and two years ago a shell-crushing factory was erected where these shells are being ground in. to grit. At! St, Helens, in Lancashire, tho waste from the plate glass works used to accumulate in mountains. The dump of one firm alone weighed more than one and a-half million tons. Some time ago it! was found that this material, which consists of sand, glass dust, and iron, could be converted into excellent bricks, so here again is a now industry of waste. Then came the discovery of radium, and it was realised that this waste heap contained a great quantity of pitchblende, from which radium is ex. tracted. A hundred men were set to work upon tho dump, and not only radium, but a^so a q ua -ntity of uranium was got from it.

A dreadful eyesore to the artists residing at St. Ives was a monstrous heap of refuse, clay, and stonoa, taken from the old Wheal Trenwith copper mine, and thrown aside as worthless. Incidentally, the dump quite spoiled an otherwise desirable building site. Slag, the waste from the great blast furnaces of the north, is being turned into slag wool, the best packings for steam pipes and boilers, slag bricks, and paving blocks. Scottish coal owners have discovered that their long abandoned “rings” of waste coal have a very considerable value. As much as 25s a ton has been paid for what was not long ago considered worse than useless. Coal tar, cotton-seed, sawdust, soap w'aste, old bones —those and a hundred other “waste” products—are now no longer waste, but, on the con. trary, aouroesof wealth.