Millions from Waste

Extravagance is the inevitable corollary to cheap living. The expression “living” is used in its very broadest sense, and is by no means confined to the mere consumption of foodstuffs. If living be cheap the thousand and one attributes complementary thereto, from wearing apparel to creature comforts for the home and from raw materials to finished goods, must necessarily rule low in price. Under such conditions the very fact that it is cheaper, as well as easier and simpler, to incur a further capital charge, rather than to endeavour to induce additional service from what is already in hand, though possibly damaged slightly, prompts waste, in precisely the same way as it is more expedient to replace the damaged part of a standardized article, whether it be a motor-car, sewing machine, typewriter, or watch, than to attempt to carry out a repair.

The ready availability of a spare part directly encourages waste more or less. The convenience is provided at an attractive figure to appeal to the consumer, while to the producer it renders a higher proportion of profit than is attainable when it forms part and parcel of the complete finished article. The latter is not marketed at the aggregate of the prices of the integral parts, as one may promptly verify if they feel so disposed. From this it must not be imagined that replacement per se is to be condemned, except that it is often attended by the complete loss of the displaced and damaged part. Were the conservation of the removed part conducted the system would be deserving of whole-hearted support, because in this way the material of which it is wrought would be available for further use. Those firms which insist upon the return of a damaged section before they undertake to forward the replacement are pursuing a wise policy. It is true they consign the faulty or worn part to the junk pile, but, at intervals, the latter is turned over to the manufacturing interests to undergo further exploitation.

It is also somewhat significant to record that improvidence is intimately associated with cheap labour. Cheap living and cheap labour go hand-in-hand. As a matter of fact, until recently the average working members of the community, from the comparative point of view, have been guilty of greater improvidence than those who are well-blessed with this world’s goods.

This apparent anomaly is readily explicable. In the houses of the wealthy the accumulation of residues of every description must necessarily attain imposing dimensions. But these wastes are not lost to commerce and industry. In the majority of cases they are handed over to the employees by whom they are regarded as legitimate perquisites. To gratify some individual whim, passing fancy, or from inherent tendency to bargain, these residues are carefully garnered and harboured to be converted into cash through one or other of the many purchasing channels which appear to diverge to these centres. The cooks dispose of bones, fats, and greases, as well as other wastes from the kitchen, to the itinerant rag-and-bone merchant; rejected wearing apparel finds its way to the wardrobe dealer; worn-out copper, iron and aluminium culinary utensils, as well as divers other metallic odds and ends gravitate to the specialists in old iron and waste metals; superfluous produce from the kitchen garden meets with profitable distribution, while even the swill is able to command its market.