Turning Slaughterhouse Waste Into Gold
A new industrial plant on the Grant Street bridge aims to convert city scraps into exportable fertilizer for the Hawaiian market.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Seattle will have a new industry next month in the shape of a fertilizer manufactory, located on the Grant Street bridge, in the corrugated iron building owned by Jacob Forth. The company will be known as the Seattle Chemical Fertilizing Company, with D. A. Crichton as manager. Chicago parties are interested in the enterprise. Mr. Crichton stated yesterday that a part of the machinery is on the way from Chicago, and that the rest is being made at Moran Bros.' foundry in this city. The company proposes to utilize the waste from slaughterhouses, hotels, and restaurants. The first operation consists of boiling, with the object of separating the animal from the mineral substance. Then the operation of drying and mixing with chemicals follows. Honolulu is the point at which a market is sought. The capital involved to start with will be about $10,000.
“The company proposes to utilize the waste from slaughter houses, hotels and restaurants.”
Long before the high-tech industrial boom of modern South Seattle, the city relied on messy, essential infrastructure like this to manage the waste of a growing population. Today, the Grant Street bridge area is part of the heavily redeveloped industrial lands near the Port of Seattle, where waste management has shifted from small-scale rendering to massive regional recycling and composting facilities.
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