City’s Waste Paper

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 686, 11 June 1929, Page 8

City’s Waste Paper

Much Used in Different Form WHERE goes all Auckland’s waste paper and rags? Some, of course, disappears down the destructor vat Some, on the other hand, commences a fresh cycle of exist ence, and reappears later in different form. A great deal, moreover, is the indirect medium of helping social down-and-outs and swelling children’s penny hanks.

Mountains of waste paper are taken daily from some blocks of offices in the city. What happens to it? The janitor has no use for it — though were he an enterprising person with a little capital he might utilise it profitably—and the manager is glad to see the last of it. The typiste, who perhaps has created most of it, simply thinks no more about it. Who gets it,' then? The city destructor, handling upward of 56 tons of refuse every day, receives a great deal of paper among the unpleasant collection of mushy, objectionable fruit-and-vegetahle class of rubbish, but enterprise deals with the remainder. It Is a far call from a typiste’s grubby finger-mark on a sheet of typewriting paper to Auckland’s standing army of social down-and-outs. Yet there is a remote association. Paper discarded in certain offices is collected by one of the social working institutions of the city, the Salvation Army, and carefully sorted and classified. Whatever Is Immediately useful is taken out; that which Is indirectly useful Is again sorted and "weighted, then baled and sent south to the paper mills for treatment. BEGINNING LIFE AFRESH In this way waste paper is just beginning another cycle of Its existence when it is consigned to the waste paper basket. It is highly probable that some of last year’s waste paper is used in the same office this year in the form of corrugated cardboard around a fancy package, or a pasteboard container for the office lead pencils. It might be unwrapped in the office manager’s kitchen as the cardboard box holding the eggs, the top of the milk bottle, or the box in which his laundry was delivered. By this enterprise the Salvation Army iu Auckland derives at least some of the revenue needed to care for the down-and-outs and probatloned criminals who find their way to Prison Gate Home, Epsom. In point of fact, the Prison Gate Home, with its normal capacity for 30 inmates, is kept supported entirely by the industries created by the collection of waste paper, rags and scrim.

Little of it is really wasted, and most of it comes back in a different form. Several firms in the city interested in upholstery are extensive purchasers of old rags, which, after being chemically treated, are passed through a scutching machine and eventually manufactured into “flock,” or padding, for upholstered furniture. It is not an inspiring thought for the business man to know that his discarded pyjamas have returned as padding in his chesterfield suite; yet this athletic performance is not without the sphere of possibility. The recommissioning of old rags has a direct influence, too, upon the operation of children’s school pennybanks. When ljd a lb is collected by an enterprising youth, it opens to him the possibility of good business in his spare time, and the penny-bank frequently gains considerably for the usual Tuesday morning call by the school treasurer. BY-PRODUCT POSSIBILITIES Refuse of all kinds finding its way to the city destructor is burned. No facilities are provided for the extraction from the garbage of paper, rags, or other material which shows any possibility of being used again. Over 12,000 tons goes up in smoke every year, and many tons of tins and tinware—after being made useless for holding germ-breeding water —are thrown on to the rubbish tip at Garnet Road. In some cities facilities are provided for recovering the solder from tins, and various uses are made of certain portions of the rubbish—bottles, sticks, cans, anything likely to enhance the value of by-production. Auckland has 14 horse-drawn carts and two electric-driven wagons going continuously collecting rubbish, and all furnaces at the destructor are hissing at their full blast for the whole 24 hours of the day disposing of the city’s waste. Dogs, too! Hardly refuse, of course, but necessarily regarded as rubbish when no owner is available. Cremation would be the better word here. Just over six tons weight of dogs was destroyed—cremated—by the city destructor last year.