PRECIOUS RUBBER

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 25, 24 October 1942, Page 6

PRECIOUS RUBBER

Collection Of Disused Articles CONTINUATION DURING ’ WAR Gazing at the mountain of disused rubber articles which covers half the vacant section next St. James Theatre, Courtenay Place, one wonders that there could have been so much waste rubber in Wellington, This great heap, about 10 feet in height and covering tin area about 50 feet square, consists' for the imost part of old tyres, from heavy-duty tyres from big lorries, to the thin, slight ones discarded from racing cycles, After tyres, aged and dishevelled hot water bags of various patterns vie with old rubbei . Shoes, goloshes and rubber boots, while colling in and out of tlie mound appears to be some miles of disused hose, and lengths of solid rubber fan belts. But this is not all the rubber which was collected by the. school boys and Boy Scouts last Saturday. There was also a well-organized campaign in the Lower Hutt district, which 'produced almost as much rubber ns was gathered in Wellington, and which still has to be brought to town. The next Job is to sort this miscellaneous collection and bale it up for transport to’ the rubber works either in Christchurch or Auckland, where it can be transmuted into commercial rubber once more, not perhaps of its original quality, but still serviceable tor many purposes. Tlie New Zealand Council for the Reclmnntlon of Waste Material exists for the duration of the war, as do the various activities it administers. The reclamation of waste rubber was not considered important in the first years of wtir, lint when Malaya and the Dutch East Indies were overrun by tlie Japanese it soon became obvious that rubber was going to be among the most precious of raw materials, for in an age of mechanized armies, practically the whole of the land forces move on rubber. For that reason there can lie no lot up iu the collection of waste rubber. No person will be able to purchase u new tyre, even if he has a permit to do so, without depositing the one it is to replace. As rubber has a fair life, there may not lie much scrap rubber available again in Wellington for some time, lint it is all to lie collected in due course. Tlie collection will go on "for tlie duration.”