NEW TIN FROM OLD

Hokitika Guardian, 13 November 1929, Page 6

NEW TIN FROM OLD

A DEVELOPING TRADE

LONDON, September 25

Statistics have just called to light the fact that five hundred tons of tins every quarter are sold by Glasgow to the New London Electron Works, one of the biggest scrap firms in the world, and flint five thousand tons of tins a year are sent by Birmingham. By a scientific process pure tin can be recovered from old cans provided they have not passed through a destructor. It. is obtained in the form of a black powder, which is very valuable, by means of electrolysis.

Authorities are paying increasing attention to the reclamation of valuable substances from wastage, and a wide, range of local councils are now engaged on the work. One of the smallest towns selling its waste cans is Marlborough, with a population of about 4000, which sends one truck a year to London. It is estimated that in an average town there are five tons of metal scrap yearly for every thousand of population. Of this, sixty per cent is tin cans and forty per cent is various forms of iron. In a city of a million inhabitants, therefore, .there should be fifty thousand tons of scrap metal a year, with perhaps thirty thousand tons suitable for detinning and likely to realise up to 3os per ton. Hitherto, tins with other rubbish have been either put through the destructor or buried, but it is now confidently expected that reclamation of tin will be soon taken up throughout the country. Works have been established at East Ham to deal with 450 tons per week, and could, at present, deal with another fifty tons a week. Preparations have also been made to extend the establishment on to fifteen acres of adjoining land—as the bulk of waste tins may demand. It seems certain that business will increase. Glasgow alone hopes, before long, to have ten thousand tons for sale every year. An estimated point to remember is that the tins should be rescued before the refuse goes to the destructor, for under great heat the tin combines with the steel and cannot afterwards be recovered.