USEFUL REFUSE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 108, 31 January 1935, Page 2

USEFUL REFUSE

House Rubbish Helps to Increase Land Value How house refuse, instead of being a trouble to city corporations, is now being put to use as a moans of filling up gullies so that building sites and flower gardens may be formed on otherwise valueless land, was described by Mr. A. W. Brayshay, in an address delivered yesterday to the conference of the New Zealand branch of the Royal Sanitary Institute. Mr. Brayshay reviewed the practice known as the Bradford system as it is applicable to Wellington. “The calorific value of house refuse is rapidly decreasing; the weight per cubic yard is decreasing, and the average cubic content of the individual collection is materially increasing,” he said. That was easily accounted for. Gas and electricity had replaced coal for heating and cooking, and consequently there were few cinders or ash. People were using enormous quantities of tinned food, and tins were bulky. It had also to be remembered that a destructor plant designed 25 years ago to produce a given amount of steam by burning a given quantity of refuse, must, if the calorific value of the refuse dropped by 50 per cent., be unable to produce the originally-given amount; that was a strong argument in favour of controlled tipping. Mr. Brayshay said that the improved value of the land after tipping was completed should be taken into consideration when assessing the cost, which averaged 5/9 per ton. On a completed tip at Island Bay a house was now built. Ths section, prior to tipping, was practically valueless; certainly a house could not have been built there. Flies and rats were less evident on a well-controlled tip than elsewhere, because the tips were treated daily with an effective solution. To kill smells, the area was liberally sprayed nightly. “The actual manurial value of house refuse may not bo much,” said Mr. Braysbay, “but the mechanical effect, after the refuse has rotted back to earth in the form of improved drainage to tlie surface soil must be material. The flower gardens made in Bradford on completed tips are proof of this.”