What was recycled in ww2

They viewed it as their patriotic duty to contribute their time and their products. Historians, however, debate how necessary scrap drives were and whether or not they helped the United States defeat Germany, Italy, and Japan.

The government did find uses for many of the donated items. Products made from rubber helped the war effort, but recycled rubber proved to be of an inferior quality to naturally occurring rubber. Mayor Yorty in Los Angeles campaigned in on a platform that called for the end of curbside recycling. This phase of US recycling lasted for less than 10 years when the reaction set in.

The generation that saw recycling end, baby boomers, were the very ones who reinstated it in US practice and culture. Not overnight, but through consistent progress against an array of large institutions imbued with vested interest concentrated corporations and inertia government agencies.

To their credit the early recycling activists made recycling happen before it was economically feasible to do so. Each day as the Survival Walk, led by Mary and Cliff Humphrey of Modesto Ecology Action, set out toward the capital, a drop-off recycling center was started as a symbol of what people could do every day to relieve the pressure on energy and resources.

In with the emergence of Earth Day 3, drop off centers were stared. In the s, the recycling movement merged with the spontaneous anti-incineration movement that emerged as communities were simultaneously threatened with large, 1, ton per day plus, garbage incinerators. Because each part of the country was affected, the movement grew rapidly from local to national dimensions, very much like the political energy and emergency that the Committees of Correspondence sent through the Colonies on the eve of the American Revolution against King George.

The battlefield was the local level because, happily, this is where decision-making authority over garbage resides. This is where citizens have the best opportunity to impact decisions.

Recycling is an extraordinary movement in which people of every age, class, race and gender made it successful. Today, recycling is an economic engine credited with creating at least 1 million jobs. Newspapers, magazines, and books were printed on fewer pages with thinner paper and narrow margins.

Paperback books had been introduced in and also allowed for less paper. However, more scrap paper was needed. The children of America stepped up. The Boy Scouts and local schools organized regular paper drives, often coordinated with the tin can drives. Participants received arm patches and certificates for collecting certain amounts. Scrap drives were a vital part of the American war effort. While not all scrap materials proved useful, many did and provided a small but significant source of material.

Most importantly, these drives galvanized the Home Front and made each individual, even children, feel like a crucial part of the war effort. Great post! The fashionable heroine challenged girls to collect used keys and to wear them on a piece of string as bracelets. It became a fad, and she won the contest. I found it! Puppy Stakes by Betty Cavanna I wonder if my mother still has the copy I read.