GOLD FROM RUBBISH.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 135, 10 June 1916, Page 3

GOLD FROM RUBBISH.

A CURIOUS RESULT OF THE WAR One of the most Curious results of the war has been the increase in the value of waste, some of which is now worth nearly as much as the new commodity used to be. Certain woollen rags, for instance, cost to-day five times as much as they did before the war, because of the dyestuffs with which they are impre gnated. The effect of such rises in price has been the paradoxical one of causing war which wastes so much precious metal, to put a stop to certain kinds of waste, This is true both in the field —where the amries of all the great belligerents have special organisations for the examination and remaking of all damaged material at the font —and in flip factory Take, for instance, “tool steel.” essential for the production of munitions Tool steel is hardened by tungsten, which costs to-day approximately eight times the pre-war price. Consequently every scrap of the material is search;* for with a viw to its ran till said hi, and inventors are even busy in the attempt to devise a process by whic.-r this si:fist; nee can fic reclaimed from worn i ot tools. Antimony is another metal which the war has advanced in price; its price today is four times the quotation of August.. 1!>l-t and the p-mt is mom Mr- ly to go up than down, owing to its value in the making of shells, the explosive force of which is heightened by the brittlenes which antimony imparts to them. Almost every kind of wornout article in whose composition antimony enters is nowadays undergoing treatment for the recovery of the ingredient. Bits of explosive shells ar~ earefully collected from the battleeld and old printing type has become a valuable commodity.

It is not only the making of munitions of war which is leading to the ransaking of the world’s rubbish heap. If every consumer of tinned commodities could return the empty receptacles to ap organisation which could work them-up again into useful articles, an enormous source of economy would be ed by the estimate that in the United States alone nearly £3,,000,000 worth of metal, at present prices, could be recovered every .year from empty tins. Rubber is another material wlmh has a high “scrap” value. Old and wanout tyres can be remade into new,and discarded goloshes and leaky garden

hose are to-day far from worthless. Any

kind of rag fetches the highest price on record, for its uses include the manufacture of clothing, the raw material for which has advanced so greatly, and the making of paper, for which the normal raw material lias been restricted in amount so as to economise in shipping space. With old worsted rags selling at 1/4 a pound, and with manufacturers unable to execute orders for want of bottles and tins, the systematic raking through of the nation’s dustbins and rubbish heaps would not only bring in a very large amount in itself, but would also help to check the rise in the price c f those commodities which have to be tinned or bottled before they can be supplied to the public.