Waste is Just Material Out of Place
We have delved deep into the archives to find this historic, but in many ways (except for the final “mental” paragraphs!) remarkably topical, article.
The writer would clearly be very impressed by today’s recycling ethos, which he refers to as; “rubbish, is only matter out of place, and that when transported to the right locality, where it is needed and useful, it ceases to be rubbish.
Indeed is this, in effect, the earliest reference to “recycling”.
What is the relevance of this article to Anaerobic Digestion, you ask!
Well the article does seem to refer to composting or recycling, as in the following:
“The contents of cesspools, stable offal, sewage matter, and other substances of this class, constituting at the places where they are produced often the most abominable nuisances, when transported to a soil needing this class of fertilizing material, become exceedingly valuable.”
Read on for the full article, and please note that the use of the word “mental” is not a typo!
Use of Rubbish, Material and Mental.
Source: Cornell University Library. http://memory.loc.gov
[Publication: Manufacturer and builder / Volume 8, Issue 8, August 1876]
THERE does not exist an absolutely useless material
in the world; everything can be made useful provided
the right place is found for it, and when succeeding in
this, then a substance which may be a nuisance in one
locality may in another locality become a blessing.
Thus the contents of cesspools, stable offal, sewage
matter, and other substances of this class, constituting
at the places where they are produced often the most
abominable nuisances, when transported to a soil
needing this class of fertilizing material, become
exceedingly valuable.
This undoubtedly is the oldest kind
of utilization of waste, but the progress of industry
gives many other substances, incidental products or
educts from manufacturing operations, which at first
running to waste and neglected, are afterward found
to contain useful ingredients, and sometimes these in-
gredients were found to be as valuable, and in a few
instances, more valuable than the material for the
manufacture of which they were at first wasted.
If then all material may be made useful, we may
truthfully say that there is in this world no such thing
as absolute rubbish, and that what we call rubbish,
is only matter out of place, and that when trans-
ported to the right locality, where it is needed and
useful, it ceases to be rubbish.
We do not yet understand how to use all waste and
useless materialall rubbish, but the progress made
by science has in so many instances taught the appli-
cation of offal and rubbish to useful ends, that we may
confidently hope this final utility will be extended to
all kinds of refuse matter.
Applying these thoughts about material things to
the mental world, we must conclude that useless peo-
ple are only persons out of place, and that the problem
to be solved by social science at the present day is to
find a place for all those who in the present state of
society are a public nuisance. Criminals indeed are
nothing but the rubbish of human society, therefore
simply mental material out of place; if we could find
the right position for all criminals, where they could
be useful and contented, it would be infinitely better
than to lock them up in asylums and prisons, or even
to destroy them by execution on a scaffold, which,
looked at from a strict moral point of view, is nothing
but a legal murder.
If the ingenuity displayed by the students of
material things, the chemists, in the utilization of the coal-
tar for instance, formerly not only considered useless,
but a nuisance, were applied by the students of mental
philosophy and social science the the utilization of the
admirable ingenuity displayed by professional
burglars and counterfeiters, and the removal of this social
rubbish to the right locality, where it would no more
be rubbish, but a blessing to humanity, it would result
in the greatest reform the wend ever saw a reform
which the different religious systems, with their
doctrines of heaven and hell, have thus far failed to
accomplish.
We confidently hope in the good time coming,
especially when looking at the ignorance and shameless
immorality of the human race in past centuries, as
revealed to us by history. Compared with this, bad as
we are, we can not fail to see the signs of moral
progress.
End of Historic Article from the Cornell University archive.
(The opinions expressed in this article, or those of the writer of this historical document, and not those of Anaerobic-Digestion.com.)
|
