GOLD IN DUST BINS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 March 1917, Page 2

GOLD IN DUST BINS.

' [£3,800,000 A YEAR FROM EMPTY TINS. One of the most- curious results of the war has been the increase in the j\ilu<i of waste, some of which is now worth nearly as much when it is waste as when it was new. Waste paper has become quite valuable. ' Rag and bone merchants arc buying up every scrap of paper they can find. This is on account of the grept difficulty of transporting wood pulp across the North : Sea. Owing to the submarine menace, our stock of paper in this country is becoming ?.o scarce that many newspaper firms, following the example of the proprietors of The Times, are seriously thinking of raising the price of their dailies. Certain woollen rags cost to-day five times as much as they did before the war, because of the dye-stuffs with whifli they are impregnated. If every consumer of tinned commodities could return the empty receptacles to an organisation whichcould work them up again into useful-articles an enormous source of economy would be tapped. Its possibilities are illustrated by the estimate that in the United States alone nearly £3,000,000 worth of metal, at present pries, could be recover- . Ed every year from empty tins. Rubber is another material which lias a high "scrap" value. Old and wornout tyres can be re-made into new, and discarded goloshes and leaky garden hose are to-day far from worthless. Any j kind of rag fetches the highest price on ' j-ecord, 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 has been restricted in amount so as to economise in shipping space. * With oM worsted stockings selling at Is 4d a pound, and with manufacturers unable to execute orders for want oT 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 of those commodities which have to be tinned or bottled before they can be sup* the public,