SALVAGED MATERIAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 July 1942, Page 4

SALVAGED MATERIAL

OLD BARRAGE BALLOONS. USED AS COVERS FOR TANKS SHIPPED OVERSEAS. The straw in the thousands of palliasses on which the British Army sleeps is now regularly turned into paper as fresh straw takes its place. c , In the old days the straw would just be burned. Today it is laid cut to air thoroughly, then packed up in bales and sent off to the paper mills. Jute from tattered sandbags goes on from the Army salvage depots to the paper makers too. There is not much that the depots do not collect. Every Week one of them alone handles 500 tons of iron, steel, aluminium and tin. It sorts out empty bottles and sends them back to the brewers, the distillers and the wine merchants. Thousands of old batteries are returned to the makers that the carbon may be reclaimed. Cid barrage balloons become strips of rubber sheeting made into watertight covers for tanks shipped overseas. Cotton reels sent in by, the Women’s Voluntary Services and the Girl Guides are used by the Royal Engineers for cable rests in laying temporary telephone and telegraph lines. More than 15,000 of them have come along. Last year this one depot collected 859 tons of Army paper for salvage and sold it at £5 a ton; in all the Army got £100,090 for its salvage in a year and passed the money on to war funds.