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140
House Refuse.—The work of collection of ashes and
miscellaneous rubbish from our 23,000 inhabited houses, has
been systematised by division of the parish into districts, and
provision has been made for inspection of dust-bins, and oversight
of the dusting gangs, the arrangements being under the
supervision of the Surveyor. A call is, or should be, made at
every house once a week—twice a week in the " Notting-dale "
district—and, subject to removal on that basis, further improvement
is scarcely possible, until the objectionable practice of
refuse-harbourage shall have given place to the more rational
system of daily collection from moveable receptacles.
Nuisance from house refuse does not arise from the proper
contents of the receptacle—ashes—but from the addition
thereto of matters of organic origin. With the object of preventing,
as far as practicable, nuisance from this cause, a
printed notice is periodically issued by your Vestry to every
householder, calling attention to the danger, sanitary
grounds, of vegetable and other objectionable refuse being
placed in the dust-bin, and requesting that directions may be
given for all such refuse to be burned. Such a notice was
issued last year. At present, a portion of the refuse, from
the northern part of the parish, is conveyed out of London by
Grand Junction Canal, the refuse from the southern part
of the parish being taken, by the contractor, down the
Thames ; but not to your Vestry's depot at Purfleet,
where the land, which lies below high-water mark, is let to the
contractor for the deposit of other matters of a presumably
less objectionable sort. The time must ultimately come when
the refuse will have to be cremated in or near the parish : the
otherwise waste-heat thus produced could be employed for the
production of " current" for the illumination of the streets by
electricity—a practice which has already been adopted with
success in other districts. Your Vestry now possess a site at
Wood Lane, where a " destructor" and an electric light installation
might be advantageously located.