Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-02-01

might have been added the real under.
lying reason why Il IL Impossible for
Philadelphia to have clean streets. ana
that Is. the Ignorance and inoifference %
our citizens. II they were not totally
Indifferent to the cleanliness and beauty
of the city they would have realized
long ago that street cleaning by contract
is an inefficient and antiquated system
A city should own and direct its own
street cleaning and refuse collection and
disposal but even the contract system,
bad as It Is, might be rendered more toll
cradle IL the contracts could be awarded
for a term of years. No competition is
possible under the one year contracts
which our laws force upon the city. The
man who already owns a plant must al
ways be the one to whom the contract
Is awarded.
Before Philadelphia can have clean
streets the contract system will have to
go, and with It the necessity the house
keeper Is now under OF putting her waste
into three separate receptacIes. Ashes
must go into one, garbage into another,
and papers and rubbish into still another,
and three separate collections must be
made. 1t is difficult for the intelligent
housekeeper to keep her waste thus sep
arated, and for the women In the tene-
ments 1t Is impossible.
LoNDoN'E EFFICIENT SYSTEM.
This whole problem of the collection
and disposal of waste could be solved by
the adoption of the destructor system
which I saw in operation In London, and
which is used in many towns in England
and on the Continent. Under this system
all household waste of every description
ashes, garbage, papers, tin cans, broken
glass and crockery, wooden and paper
boxes, rags and excelsior-is put into one
receptacle. This simple plan prevents tho
litterng Of the streets when the recep-
tacles are emptied, for the wet garbage
holds the ashes, and the mixture of gar
bage and ashes holds the papers. This
mixed waste is taken to furnace known
technically as a destructor, where it
burns without the use of any other fuel,
since there is always enough dry waste
to consume the wet waste.
Tho power generated by the fires Of the
destructor Is used In some towns to pump .
water into the reservoirs, and in others
to provide electric lighting. In London
the ash that results from the cremation
of the refuse Is used to macadamize roads,
and the clinkers which come from the
fusion of the old glass and crockery are
ground up, mixed with hydraulic cement
and made into bricks. These bricks find
a ready sale for paving streets, building
flrebacks to furnaces and for all other
purposes for which flreproof and water
proof bricks are in demand.
If this simple, cleanly, economical and
scientific method of collecting and dospos-
ing of household waste is successful and
profitable in England. why can 1t not be
equally successful in this country? Be-
cause, we are told, there Is so much wet
waste in the household refuse of Ameri-
can citizens that the destructor process
becomes impossible. It is true that we
have more wet waste than they have in
England, particularly in summer when
green corn and watermelon refuse fill the
garbage cans. but as we are wasteful
and extravagant people, we have also
much more dry waste.
1t is not the wet waste that goes into
the garbage furnace that makes the de-
structor process failure in this country;
1t is the politics that go into the garbage
furnace.
Eliminate the politics and the wet
waste will burn.