WEALTH FROM WASTE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 282, 8 June 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

WEALTH FROM WASTE.

THE ROMANCE OF RUBBISH. In these days of war-time economy, when politicians are warning the public against waste of every description, there are few things more fascinating than to observe the manner m which the modern manuficturer now utilises waste material of practically every sort, or what a few years ag)o used] to be slightingly termed—rubbish 1 Rubbish! there is no such thing as rubbish nowadays, and gai |ige and refuse in almost every shape and form can be utilised, spelling weath to men who know their business. Things that are thrown into the streets, dustbins, an dother receptacles for rubbish, can be used in so many ways that scarcely anything can be considered absolutely useless. QUEER USES FOR OLD LEATHER. That there 13 "nothing like leather," for instance—old leather, too, at that — is proved by the many wonderful ways in which cast-off boots and shoes and apparently-useless scraps of leather can be used. First they—the old boots and shoes and scraps—are cut up into small pieces, and then put for two days into chloride of sulphur, the effect of whieh is to make the leather very bard and brittle. When this is -fully effected the materia] is withdrawn from the action of the chloride of sulphur, washed with water, dried, and ground to powder. It is then mixed with a substance that will cause it to adhere together, such as shellac or other resinous material, or even a good glue, and a thick solution of strong gum. It is afterwards pressed into moulds to form combs, buttons, and a varoty of-other useful articles.

Pruasiate of potash is also made out of old leather. It is heated <with pearlash and old iron- hoops in a large pot. The nitrogen and carbon form cyanogen, and then unite with the iron and potassium. The soluble portions are dissolved out, an dtho resulting salt, added to one of iron, produces the wellknown Prussian blue, either for dyeing purposes or as a pigment. Old,- battered tin cans-are melted to be moulded into buttons, for window weights, for sheathing trunks, for "pewter" soldiers, and'other toys of that type. Broken glass is used to make artificial stone; and ashes, by a combination with potash and other alkaline ingredients, are similarly employed. The bones of dead' animals yield the chief constituents of lucifer matches; and the offal of the streets and the washings of coal gas reappear in the form of flavouring for blancmange or as smelling salts. The dipp'ngs of the tinker, mixed with the parings of horses' hoofs, or cast-off woollen garments, make dy«-s of the brightest hues.

COTTON AND COTTON-WASTE. To the cotton grower the cottonseed was long regarded as an insufferable nuisance, to be got rid of only at trouble and expense. After being separated from the cotton fibre it was thrown away. It has become now, through chemistry, the basis of a whole catalogue of activities known.as the cottonseed oil industries. Chemistry has shown the cotton grower how to refine the oil made from the seed, and noW it is extensively used as 6weet oil for salad dressings, while much of it is employed as an adulterant or masquerades openly in the gu-se of olive oil. It is used also in the various lard mixtures, such as cottolene, and it makes a good wholesome food. From the residue, after the oil is pressed out, is manufactured cottonseed cake, which is used os a cattle food. The crude, unrefined oil is good soap stock, and the cotton fibre taken from the hulls is variously employed to make a high grade off paper, a good fuel, and a fertiliser.

Everyone is familiar with a .wad of cotton waste carried by engine-drivers. It is waste, thrums, doubler'a waste, winder's waste, picked loom-shed sweepings, and soiled thread waste'generally. And it is found all over the world, whether it be called engine weste in Great Britain, wiping .waste in America, known as dechets d'essuyage in France, ir pntzwolle in Germany. This, however, is only one of the uses of waste. If yon have a Bolton bleached counterpane on your bed, the weft of it is waste. If yon like a substantial bed sheet, the weft is also .waste. If you use candle, the wick is waste. Your lamp wick fa waste. The beautiful cotton tapestries woven in Prance have a proportion of threads spun from waste. Medicated absorbent cotton is generally waste. The wadding in your coat is waste. The little tuft of cotton you- see on bananas at times is waste, being part of the wading in which it has been packed. The basis of the cordite used by our Army and Navy is waste. The cotton flock in cheap 'bedding and uphoMery is waste. Celluloid is made from a fine quality of waste. Some methods of making artificial silk have waste as their basis.

Jn the United States and Canada, the mattresses are made from cotton waste and linters, a use for the article not current in Europe. An enormous quantity is also consumed there for the production of "bats," i.e~, carded sheets, for inner lining of wadded quilts or comforters, as they are named there, as well as for carpet linings, which make a very soft tread compared with the felt lining we use. Very large quantities of waste go into consumption for mixing with wool in Yorkshire. On the Continent much waste is used for Vigogne yarn, being dyed raw and spun on woollen machinery. ALCOHOL FROM SAWDUST! Sawdust, once a problem to the millwright, who scarcely knew how to get rid of it, now forms the bnsVj of a considerable independent industry, in which there is a big profit per annum. As a matter of fa-t, the one-time despised particles of sawdust are now mom valuable tnan folid timber. By the use of hydraulic pressure and intense heat tho particles arc formed into a solid m?.ss capable of being moulded into any shape and of receiving a brilliant polish. The only materials u-iod are sawdust, alum, and glue. Imitation marble can lie manufactured from a. mixture of sawdust with ivory waste, water, glass, ::nd glue.

11l Norway acetic acid, wood naptha. tar, and aWihol arc produced on ;i commercial scale out of sawdust. The collection and disposition of sawdust for a variety o/ common purposes form a considerable industry in many cit'os. In New York City, for example, there are some .'SOO sawdust vendors, havinrr a cap'tal of about 200.000 dollars, and doinn a busines* of more than 2,000.n:)0 dollars a year. The sawdust is sold for n?n on tno floors of saloons, and restaurants, to plunders, to packers to put about fragile articles, to makers of dolls for .stuffing, and for other purposes.

Each large packing establishment now has its long list of by-prodii'f«. Anions the other articles manufactured out of the former waste products of Mi' abbntoir a™ glue, fly-pnper, sand-nnper. irelatine. ninirl:>»;. curled hair, bristle', wool felt, ha'r felt, laundry soap po.-r-

ders, ammonia, bone meal, pepsin, glycerine, poultry food, and many others. Yeest % ia valuable by-product of the malting and distilling industries, and the exhausted malt, etc., is now compressed and mokes excellent cattle food. ' In the wine-making industry the residue left after pressing the grapes was formerly wasted. From it is now made a low-grade brandy. Combined with copper, it supplies verdigris. -Vinegar is another by-product, and the residue from the secondary or brandymaking process is utilised as cattle fodder and fertiliser, and, when dried, as a fuel. The grape seeds are useful for the extraction of their oU and tannic acid. Another product is argol, wnich, purified, becomes cream of tartar, the basis of the baking ponders and of various medicines. PERFUME WONDERS. The choicest perfumes .which are placed upon the market are obtained from oils and others extracted from flowers, but there are many other oils which are artificially made out of badsmelling elemeuts. 'Oil of pine-apple is begt made by the action of putrid cheese or sugar, or by distilling ranc'di butter with alcohol and sulphuric acid. Iho essential flavouring substance of the vanilla bean, known to chemists as vanillan, as well as other essences, are manufactured ont of coal tar and the oil of cloves. Coal tar, of course, is one of the most valuable and wonderful of all waste products, and it would be almost impossible to compute the added wealth with which it has enriched the human race.

Antipyrin, one of the mos valuable medicines in nervous diseases, is one of the products of tar. For the production of dye-stuffs, too, coal tar has become almost indispensable, and to most people it still remains a mystery how ail the delicate hues of the rainbow can be' produced from such an oily, dirty substance.

Sweetness is just about the last thing ono would associate with coal-tar, yet : t is a fact that from this despised! product —which at one time was so great a nuisance to the gas companies that th«|r actually paid for permission to dram it into the common sewer, as the simplest way of getting rid of it—is obtained saccharin, a substance three hundred times sweeter than sugar!

STONE, IRON, AND CEMENT. Slag—the refuse of mines and furnaces —was for long regarded as useless. Now it is treated in a variety of .ways, and converted into a number of useful things, such cs paving.-, tones, slag-glass, and slag-sand. Slag bricks is one of its chief uses at present, and for these there is a considerable demand. Mortar for building purposes' is another method of utilisation, simply achieved by grinding the slag-sand with about 6 per cent, of slaked lime; artificial stone, moulded into chimneypieces, window heads and sills, wallcoping, and other ornamental work for builders.

Old) iron ij the basis of a business whose output is valued annually in hundreds of thousands of pounds. Every piece of old iron, wrought or cast, rusty or clean, can be utilised. The old cast iron is sent to foundries and puddling furnaces, the old wrought iron, bars, sheets, and plates, is sent to the rolling mills. Cast iron sent to foundries is remelted with pig-iron, and" begins a new life of usefulness under new forms and shapes. The wrought iron goes to tho scrap piles in rolling-mill yards. There it is sorted and cut- to convenient lengths, then made up into " box" piles or faggots, heated to a white heat in furnaces, and run through the rolls which first weld the pieces into a solid billet and then reduce the billets to bars.

Soap manufacturers .will be interested to know that a striking instance of the important bearing of applied science to industry has recently l>een furnished at the factory of one of the largest Canadian soap manufacturers. In preparing soap, an immense quantity of various residues accumulate. Some of these can be turned to commercial advantage, such as glycerine, but others have hitherto resisted any profitable application. Among the latter is carbonate of lime, which is produced in large quantities. In the course of prolonged experiments in the chemical laboratory, searching for some moans of utilising the wrste, the above manufacturers succeeded in discovering that it could bo profitably employed in the making of Portland cement, and, the process being commercially applicable, a large factory as an adjunct to the soap refineries is being erected, capable of turning out over four hundred tons of cement per week.

PAPER MYSTERIES. Payer is nowadays made out of materials otherwise absolutely worthless. In fact, the variety of worthless things used in the making of paper eeems to 1)0 enly exceeded by the variety cf uses to which the manufactured article is pue. From newspapers to street paving and from bank-notes to railway carriage wheels there is a very wide range of usefulness.

To the romance of papormaking there would, indeed, seem to l>e no end, tho very latest worthless material utilised in its manufacture being old tarred ropes which have served their day at the coal pits. Out of this dirty and apparently unreachable substance is produced a tissue paper of sic most beautiful fabric, oven in surface and deli'.'-ato colour, ;i ream of which, with wrappers and strings, weighs only two pounds and a-half. It 'i,s principally used in the potteries for transferring the various patterns to the earthenware, and is found superior to any -substance yet known for that purpose. It is so tenacious that a sheet of it twisted by the hand, in the form of a rope, will support upwards of one hundredweight. The Russians are ono. of the few European nations who do not utilise the'r old hone- 1 - —they export or simply waste them; other more thrifty people boil thorn to extract their grease and gelatine, convert them into charcoal to bo u>ed in refining sugar, pas.s them on to tho tumor to l,e made into knife handles, egg-spoons, toothbrush handles and numerous other useful prticlrn, or grind them down to supply pho-splint:; cf lime for farmers' crops.

FARMING KCOXOMIES. At one time skim nii'k was of little use except as food for the pi}:*, and thousands of gallons w<re thrown a.way. ( hrmists, however, d'-covorod' a process l>y which it could he turned into n hard substance, and now it is employed in the manufacture of button.; ;uirl similar article**, while in other forms it. is used for varnishing j)i|K«r and in the making of artilieii'.l foods.

'I ho debts of Norwegian farmers wbo>e holdings l><> along the seashore hav« l>een paid in'roeont veal's by the income arising from the s a-1e of seaweed a.she«. ft ap|>o;'r.s from a. recent repert that he gat.li■ rill-_r of seaweed in the soiith-wst of N'rif.'.'av Ins a-sutucd the proportions of a lirge industry that has surpassed fishing and agriculture .'n fortutiti buildiuff.

Farmers colled the apparently wort?!-

less prowtli, liiirn it, and sell the ashes to agents of British manufacturers. Tlio allies contain valuable cliemical properties, including iodine and' dilorine, hut the use to which they aro pot is not known in Norway. It is estimated that alxni't €30,000 per annum is derived from thi.s hitherto discarded source of income. GLASGOW'S EXPERIENCE. Prom the a initial report of the C!ein«ing Department of Glasgow Corporation it appears that among the refuse dealt with last year were about ".'!!• tons of old t : ns, galvanised, etc.. ware, and light iron. The .sum of t'1717 Is 5d was obtained, and this amount would have been greater but for the fact that a profitable market for galvinised an domimelled scrap could not be obtained at present. In connection with the collection of wa>to paper. 65.S tons .') cwt. were sold for €279 10-s Id.