Increasing the Value of Waste Products
E. C. Lathrop
Head, Agricultural Residues Division
*Northern Regional Research Laboratory
Peoria, Illinois
Probably no country has been so profligate with its natural resources
as America. In the acquisition of fortunes running into millions of
dollars pioneer industrialists destroyed and wasted billions. Witness the
destruction by the lumber industry of the wood stands of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Even today with improved practices in the
lumber and pulpwood industries the waste is still enormous and creates
a national problem. Industry is alive to this problem, and research
expenditures of considerable magnitude are directed to a rational use
of waste forest products.
America awakened to the necessity of natural resource conservation less than 50 years ago. The outstanding progress made in this
country in its industrial process development has been based more and
more on the elimination of wasteful processes and practices and on the
conservation of materials, energy, time, and labor. During the course
of this progress, which has been notable, it has become clear that waste
elimination and the utilization of waste products depend most often on
the development of new information and are, therefore, a joint problem
of management and research.
The fuel industries are much in the public eye today. The coal and
petroleum industries 25 years ago were fairly comparable in wasteful
practices. Today the petroleum industry in its high chemical and technological development has become a leader in waste utilization. Some
of our most important industrial chemical developments are now based
on what were once waste petroleum products. Aside from some improvements in handling of materials, progress in coal mining and in coal utilization has been meager.
Farm wastes or, preferably, agricultural residues constitute one of
the major unsolved waste utilization problems, not only in America,
but the world over. Every year American farms have two hundred
million tons of straws, stalks, cobs, shells, hulls, and the like for which
* One of the laboratories of the Bureau of Agricultural and Industrial
Chemistry, Agricultural Research Administration, U. S. Department of Agriculture.
8