Treasures Once Wasted.

Hokitika Guardian, 1 March 1924, Page 4

Treasures Once Wasted.

The suggestion made by Mr W. T. Gordon, in a lecture at King's College, chat pearl shell, mining in Birmingham might be highly profitable, brings strongly to mind the fact that industrial England is strewn with golden rubbish heaps. Tile rapid progress of .science and intention constantly reveals new methods of putting to profitable use material which until recently was regarded as useless waste, and the result is that vast dumps which have merely disfigured the lamlsrape 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 on!'- one button could he cut. do-day

eu-iy atom of the beautiful iridescent material is valuable.

At vnr ion's place-, on !]>,. East Uv\st v-t 1 lies of nvdiuarv limpet shells. Then.- is ana at West A'”'-'-ea which con!aiiis hiimheiU of tons. Recently the value of those shells as poultry ,V. il 'ms linen realised, and two years ago a shell-crushing factory was erected where these .shells are being ground into grit. At Zt. Helens, in Lancashire, the w from the plate-glass works r-,w to cccmnalate in mountains. The dump of e-t-e ill m alone weighed more than oin a: d a half Million logs. Some ling ago it was found that ibis muteon a iron, 1 cold be convert'. ■! into cxi d-.cf bri'-ks. so boic again is a new ind: i"y ~ui of wa-ir, ' drcadi’d -n \e-arc to ilie iil’tists re■idtug at St. ivs! v. a- a mmislieus heaj) ui’ i' iit • 1 1: v and stones taken from the rM Viis'sl Trenwiiil cop| <••• mine mid i al ie a- v-oft bless. Tm i dentally, il'c duinn nijiie spoiled an ofherv i-'• desirable buibling, site. TI iv n egg'n the discovery of radium and it wn< realised that ibis waste heap coni,s.ined a great (ptantity of j'-ilelililende, from which radium is oxtracied. A hundred men were set to uo'k ilium j lie dump. and not only ladiuin, bin also a fjtiaulitv of uranium was got from it. Slag, the waste from the great blast, fe'iiatvx of the North, is being (timed i:m dag word, the he-d ef packing for sicnin )upcs an.d boiler.-;, slag bricks, and paving blocks. Scottish coal-own-aiu have discovered that, lheir long abandoned "lings” of waste coal have a very considerable value. As much a.s g'.x a ton has been paid for what was not long ago considered worse than mude-s. (•oui tar, cotton-seed, sawdust, soap wad'-, old Is no; Dime and a hundred oilier “wo,sic” i rodur-ts are now no longer waste, bin, on the eonti'ary. son i-r-e-, of wcalili.