Throw your scrap into the fight...
Worried US citizens on the homefront, many with family members fighting abroad, desperately wanted to do something to help. When scrap drives began in 1942, Americans enthusiastically embraced recycling for the war effort. The government wanted metal, rubber, paper, and kitchen fats. Extremely successful, scrap drives collected millions of tons of material.
Recycled metal was transformed into ships, tanks, and hundreds of other items. Manufacturers produced boots, tires, life rafts, pontoon bridges, and gas mask seals from recycled rubber. Recycled paper became packaging for products previously stored in tin and cushioned military products like vaccine boxes, blood plasma containers, K-ration cartons, and shell casings. Recycled kitchen fats produced glycerin, an essential component of soap, explosives, and some drugs. Shoppers received 4 cents and 2 red ration points for each pound of fats turned in at a butcher shop. Close to 75% of the 711 million pounds of recycled war-time kitchen fats came from civilian kitchens. (My grandmothers always had a container for meat drippings on the stove. Did yours?)
This video, from Discovery Education, shows common WWII scenes of Americans responding to scrap drives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7q_DGX_HKk
School districts sponsored competitions for children to bring in the most metal. Nationwide, over 30 million children collected an estimated 1.5 million tons of metal for scrap drives. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and service groups also rallied to the cause.
Featured Photo: School children celebrating their successful drive.
Recycling impacted American music and radio history. Pre-war, shellac was a component used in record production. Scrap drives collected records to re-use the shellac to press new albums for troops overseas. (see V-Discs) Americans donated hundreds of millions of records. Record companies also donated aluminum and copper recording masters used to press albums. Aluminum disks holding recordings of early radio broadcasts also succumbed to scrap drives.
In my historical fiction novel, Dear Nora, Mother writes to Nora on June 1, 1944, “Last week, we cheered when the county commissioners voted to give the Civil War cannons on the courthouse lawn to the scrap iron drive. Good riddance to those reminders of our own troubled history. There is no glory in displaying weapons of war.”
The short video contains WWII radio footage with war-time celebrities promoting scrap drives. The last song in the video, “Der Fuehrer's Face,” was a hit in 1942 for the popular comedy band Spike Jones and His City Slickers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaD161ENVl0