Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 108, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1904 — DISPOSED OF GARBAGE. [ARTICLE]

DISPOSED OF GARBAGE.

How Two French Cities Manage to Keep the Streets Clean. In the clfy of Lyons, France, no special means have ever been employed for the disposition of garbage/, says the Municipal Journal and Engineer. The inhabitants of the. city generally live in apartments,. They dump their garbage into large tubs which are placed In the entrance to the building and which, when full, are lef torF'the curb of the street to be in carts that call dally J before o’clock a. m. The contractors,, wjjp carry off this garbage are, free : jto do what they please with, it. The work costs the city annually about $55,633. " The streets of Lyons are * swept three times a week with heavy hickory brooms. They are washed dally with water driven from hydrants through a long hose. The water Is thus squirt-' ed Into the cracks between the stones, and whatever refuse may remain after the sweeping Is thus drained off into the sewers. All the work of cleaning the streets is done by manual labor, no machines being used. The two rivers Rhone and Saone flow through the cify,’ arid the waste water from the apartments is carried off into one of them by sewers, according to the proximity to one or the other of the streams. , The exact cost per cubic foor 6r per ton of removing and destroying garbage is not knwn. In Paris, where-the garbage was burned, the entire oper-ation-removing, interest on plant at 2 per cent*—costs 48 cents a ton. The rubbish generally receives the careful attention of ragpickers and after it has been conveyed to the incinerator a number of ragpickers are authorized, TiSHa "special privilege, :to go through the mass of debrjs and appropriate what they find, such as, {fits of tin, sardine boxes, corks, pieces oCglasS arid bottles, scraps of pap'er, woo<J, etc. All the scraps thus rescued from the incinerator find ready purchasers—the tip. and solder remaining on the tin are used in the manufacture of. toys for children; the corks are ground up and'reconstructed into cork, bark or are serit to linoleum factories. The worlj of-jricking over the rubljlsh for salable .“things will hereafter be confined to employes of the city.