GOLDEN RUBBISH HEAP.

Shannon News, 8 April 1924, Page 2

GOLDEN RUBBISH HEAP.

TREASURES ONCE WASTED.

The suggestion made by Mr, W. T. Gordon, in a lecture at King’s College, that pearl sncll mining in Birmingham might bo highly profitable, brings strongly to mind the fact that industrial England is strewn with golden • rubbish heaps (writes ‘ T.C.8.” in the Daily Mail). The rapid progress of science and invention constantly reveals new methods of putting to pro- / fitable use material which until recently was regarded as useless waste, and the result is that vast dumps which have merely disfigured the landscape are being eagerly bought up and worked.

The pearl shell to which Mr Gordon referred consists of shelis of the pearl oyster, from each of which in old days only one button could be cut. To.day every atom of the beautiful iridescent material is valuable.

At various places on the East Coast lie vast piles of ordinary limpet shells. There is one at West Mersca which contains hundreds of tons. Recently the valuorjf these shells as poultry grit has been\ealised, and two years ago a shell-crusliing factory was erected where these shells are being ground in. to grit.

' Ati St, Helens, Lancashire, the waste from the plate glass works used to accumulate in mountains. The dump of one firm alone weighed more than one and a-half million tons. Some time ago it) was found that this material, which consists of sand, glass dust, anti iron, could be converted into ex- . cellent bricks, so hero again is a new fnflustry of waste. Then came the discovery of radium, .and it was realised that this waste heap contained a great quantity of •> pitchblende, from which radium is ex. tracted. A hundred men were set to work upon the dump, and not only radium, but also a quantity of .uranium was got from it. A dreadful eyesore to the artists residing at St. Ives was a monstrous heap of refuse, clay, and stones, taken from the old Wheal Tremvith copper mine, and thrown aside as worthless. Inci- ' dentally, the dump quite spoiled an otherwise~dcsirable building site. Slag, the waste from the great blast furnaces of the north, is being turned ■ into slag; wool, the best packings for steam pipes and boilers, slag bricks, and paving blocks. Scottish ooal owners have discovered that their long abandoned “rings” of Avaste coal have a very-considerable value. As much as 25s a ton has been paid for what was not long ago considered worse than useless. Coal tar, cotton-seed, sawdust, soap Avaste, old bones —these ,and a hundred other “waste" products—are now no longer waste, but, on the con. trary, sourcesof wealth.