AUTOMOBILE JUNKYARDS 431 



We might, by such a system, be able to salvage much of the iron 

 and steel scrap which is now lost for all productive purposes by 

 being buried in sanitary land-fills or deposited in dumps with or with- 

 out incineration in many of our suburban and rural areas. 



We, as a Nation, have been very profligate with our nonrenewable 

 natural resources. I think we, as a Nation, cannot continue in the 

 future to waste our resources as we are doing now by incineration, 

 sanitary land-fills and other methods of disposal. Systems must be 

 developed whereby reusable materials such as iron and steel, other 

 metals, glass, rubber, paper, etc., may be salvaged from what we 

 term rubbish or trash. The nonsalvageable material along with 

 garbage could be ground, digested bacteriologically and the resulting 

 product mixed with sewage sludge and marketed possibly as a mulch 

 or better, supplemented with the necessary chemicals once converted 

 to a fertilizer of standard composition for which we already have a 

 recognized use and an established marketing system. 



Theorizing a bit, it would appear that we have on this earth now 

 as much iron as we ever have had. Our usual procedure is to con- 

 vert our iron ore to metal, fabricate it into useful products which 

 after use are abandoned, allowed to rust, that is, return to the orig- 

 inal oxide form. We have, however, discarded such a large propor- 

 tion of our used metal so far and wide and in such small quantities 

 throughout our countryside, for example our tin cans along our 

 roadside, that it is no longer possible or economical to collect the 

 scrap iron or the iron oxide resulting from the rusting of these iron 

 and steel products. If all of this disseminated material could be 

 collected and stored as stock, piled in one spot, a quarry for example, 

 it could be salvaged either in the form of iron and steel or even if 

 corroded and rusted in the form of iron oxide. We might in effect 

 be reestablishing our iron or iron ore mines. 



This suggestion is submitted for consideration in the hopes that 

 it might offer a feasible and economic method of beautifying our 

 highways and our landscape. 



JAMES A. McLANE. In Rhode Island we feel that it is imperative 

 that we do not desecrate our abundantly beautiful America for 

 material gains alone. The heritage and beauty which we have in- 

 herited from our forefathers must be preserved. Urban development 

 in America cannot be allowed to press unplanned with no concern 

 for the values of beauty. While there is no clear definition of beauty, 



