Pyramids of Junk

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 220, 6 December 1927, Page 10

Pyramids of Junk

DESTRUCTOR AND ITS WORK

Jewels in the Garbage Tin

IF Rifleman G. W. Maynard will call at the office of the 1 city destructor, a war-service medal will be returned to Raking over the masses of garbage dumped daily at the destructor, an alert stoker caught the glint of the metal m the decoration, and rescued it from a fiery end.

is with the loser when lost property is thus recovered, as the odds are against discovery once the

rubbish-collector has taken charge. Each cartload of garbage weighs from one t p two tons, and the rubbish is packed so tightly that when the tailboard is dropped the congested mass holds its shape as though set in a jelly mould. All day and every day, Sundays excluded, there is a coming and going of carts. Sixteen wagons and more than a score of horses collect the city’s

refuse, delivering up to 50 tons daily into bins above the furnaces, and in the discarded assortment the Cullinan diamond, or a gem from a mogul’s throne, might slip unnoticed into oblivion. Radium of inexhaustible power and fabulous value once slipped into the garbage can of a New Zealand hospital, and was recovered from the ashes of the janitor’s furnace. But if it had found its way into an Auckland rub-bish-cart, and on to the destructor, It might never have been recovered. There are some things even money cannot achieve, a stage at which perseverance can win no reward, and for that reason officials at the destructor can do little to help the many who call or telephone with urgent tales of loss. TREASURE-TROVE “It was my engagement ring” said one girl imploringly, but by that time the precious circlet, if it had been lost in the household rubbish, was buried in a dozen tons of clinker Some call the destructor office with futile requests. “Did you find a pound

note? X think we shook it out of the tablecloth.” Chalice may invest the rubbish-tip with the glamour of treasure-trove, but the reality is dingy and prosaic. Tins in countless hundreds bespeak the staple diet- leaves of bread, butter cheese, fruit —the larder of battalions —these reflect the waste of a wanton generation. Old clothes and vege tables, nearly as ancient, live cartridges by the score, battered hats and broken bicycles, a purse that contained only a solitary playing card—“ten of spades”—murmured the stoker regretfully —all this helps to build the musty pyramid of junk. Here a novelist might find the seed of a great plot. Take this fragment, picked up casually yesterday . . trust that the court . . . twin children. As . - . womsn, but I feel ... irresponsible conduct . . . affectionate husband . . . do. what you reason . . . trouble in the . . Shredded letters, oddments such as this, may reveal romance and tragedy, or carry their secrets to the withering flame. THE PROCESS OF DESTRUCTION As the garbage is dumped into the receiving bins it is raked by the stokers into apertures in the floor. Beneath, on the lower Patteson Street level, are the five Meldrum units, and the rubbish falls first into a dryingchamber and is then pushed forward into the heart of the fires. Forced draught is introduced under steam pressure and one particularly torrid inferno is set apart for bad fruit and carcases. Three dogs can go up in smoke, even unto the utmost ember, in two brief minutes, and an arrangement of extensive baffling tubes robs all the smoke of smell or soot, so that a pale blue wisk drifting from the tall smokestack may be all that signifies the last of stricken Fido. Last year 12,600 tons of material was burned by the destructor, most of the ash being deposited at Grey Lynn. The bulk of the refuse was collected in the Corporation carts, drawn by sagacious horses that know every gate on their particular patrols, and perform, without urging, the manoeuvres required to empty the carts in the constricted space of the tipping-platform. Originally the destructor, now over 20 years old, helped to supply the city’s power, but garbage is an unsatisfactory fuel, generating an extremely slow and uncertain heat, and the plant is now primarily a refuse furnace, though steam is utilised for small machines at the adjacent workshops, and to provide hot showers along with the other facilities for the workmen.

And they need them, for the gaunt receiving bins are not exactly gardens of flowers. But the place is surprisingly clean and orderly—clean enough to be run as the heating agency for an adjacent tepid bath, though hardly such a palace as to justify the extravagant solicitude of the City Council, which declined to authorise a Press inspection unless a responsible official convoyed the scribe. Fortunately Mr. J. Tyler, assistant-engineer, was able to oblige.