Unlikely Finds At Compost Plant

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30960, 17 January 1966, Page 3

Unlikely Finds At Compost Plant

"The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND, Jan. 16.

The minute hand of the watch on the office table pointed to the figure 10. The hour hand had gone and so had the glass face, but the old-fashioned poc-ket-watch still ticked away merrily.

With an alarm clock—also ticking—and a pair of steelrimmed spectacles with lenses unscathed, the watch had just survived five-day journey through the grinders, pound-

ing hammers and separators at the Auckland City Council compost plant in Mount Wellington. ‘We never cease to be amazed at the way some watches come through unharmed,” said the plant supervisor, Mr E. D. Ericksen. “Some of them don’t even show any rust.” But the watches are the small fry of the many unlikely articles that find their way through the plant.' Piled in one corner are truck drive-shafts, car starter motors, a squashed 44-gallon petrol drum, vices, manifolds, parts of lawn mowers, a wide variety jpf cutlery, spanners, car tyres and fishing reels.

“We have had everything for a car now except the body,” said Mr Ericksen, who has been at the plant since it was opened three years ago. "It amazes me that dustmen are able to lift the dustbins.” A ship’s crane hook, capable of carrying five tons, which made its way through the system is now being used by an Auckland fishing launch' Twenty-four trucks take an average of 250 tons of household rubbish to the plant each week. About a third of this is rejected as unsuitable for conversion into comport. The daily output of compost is

about 80 cubic yards. The rubbish is dumped in large hoppers and taken on conveyor belts into two continually rotating steel cylinders 82 feet long and 11 feet wide. Nearly all ferrous materials are first removed by magnetic separators. Each batch of refuse spends five days fermenting in the cylinders before passing through screens which remove plastics, rubber, fabrics and crockery. The residue is then ground to a pulp in two mills by 48 hammers. It is hard work for the hammers. They have to be replaced every 12 days.