WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 23, 18 June 1952, Page 5

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

RUBB1SH BECOMES VALUABLE Many American engineers and ehemists are active in turning what once were considered waste materials into valuable products. Already, petroleum engineers are obtaining more oil from wells once believed ^exhausted." When wells stop flowing of tbeir own accord, 50 to 70 percent of the original supply may remain in the ground. By flooding wells with water, another 20 to 25 percent can be forced to the surface. When synthetic soap is added to "water, still more oil can be recovered. Another chemical compound helps prevent corrosion of the water pipes and pumping equipment, and destroys bacteria that often block pores in the sand. With wood wastes chemists have scored triumphs. Wood shavings and sawdust yield industrial alcohol. The Virginia Polytechnic Institute has made more than 150 varieties of wall board from sawdust. In some American homes to-day the ceilings, walls and partitions are made of this kind of wallboard. In the southern State of Florida, orange and grapefruit peels are byproducts of the fruit iixhistry. Formerly these peels were wasted. To-day they are converted into high-grade animal feed, fertilizers and natural oils. Other agricultural wastes have been turned into valuable products. Tobaceo leaf fragments are manufactured into insecticides. Rice bulls are used to make wall-board and cement blocks, and as a gentle grinding material to clean carbon from the inside of internal combustion engines, A cement company in Tennessee each day collect about 75 tons of dust, which formerly settled over the surrounding countryside. This dust contains large amounts of potash, and is therefore valuable as a fertilizer and so on. The search for increasing uses of waste product's goes and unceasingly in laboratories and schools throughout the United States. Unusual Calendar. This year the Tasman Empire Airways Ltd. have issued an extremly beautiful calendar. Six illustrations, reproductions of TEAL original oil paintings depict outstanding attractions in Australia, New Zealand and the islands. An unusual feature is that the calendar commences at June mstead of the beginning of the year.