BRING IN YOUR JUNK!
Recycling in World War II Written by Emily Bryant, Battleship Cove
From its 16-inch guns, the World War II battleship USS Massachusetts fired projectiles that weighed over 2000
pounds. This large heavy chunk of metal was sent soaring towards its targets, exploding on impact, capable of
destroying ships and buildings from 22 miles away. Yet this deadly ammunition may very well have been made
from something as simple as an old pot or shovel. Why? The answer is recycling.
We recycle nowadays often for environmental reasons. We don’t want
plastic water bottles filling up landfills, or Styrofoam coffee cups leaking
chemicals into the soil. During World War II, it was different—our
country desperately needed recycled materials. There simply wasn’t
enough materials to go around, and manufacturers couldn’t keep up
with making new ones. Therefore, recycling had to happen so an object
could be made into something else that was needed for fighting the war.
One of the biggest demands was for scrap metal. So many of the
machines we used for war were made of metal: ships, tanks, guns, and
ammunition. Americans participated in scrap drives, in which they
gathered any old metal they had lying around their homes and brought
them to a central location in their town. Piles of scrap metal began to
grow—old pots, pans, bicycle tire rims, irons, pipes, chain, silverware—
anything would work. Kids even donated their beloved metal toys. No
matter where you went, posters advertised the need for scrap metal, telling Americans to “Save Scrap for Victory”
or “Bring in Your Junk.”
Other materials got recycled too. Lighter metals like aluminum and tin were needed to make airplanes. Old
clothing was needed to make bandages. Rubber was needed for tank and airplane tires, as well as gas masks and life rafts. Even pantyhose were recycled--
the nylon was needed to make parachutes for airmen. Many women felt they couldn’t be seen in public without pantyhose, so they put makeup on their legs
instead to make it look like they were wearing pantyhose! One woman in France even recycled a
parachute she found on the ground by making it into her wedding dress.
One of the stranger materials to be recycled was waste fats. Think
about the greasy liquid left in the pan after you cook bacon or
hamburgers. Nowadays, we wouldn’t think twice about throwing
that away! But in World War II, people were told to save it. The
fat contained a material called glycerin which was used to make
explosives. So Americans kept an empty jar by the stove, filling it up
with waste fat and eventually taking it to their local butcher shop to
be sent off to an ammunition factory.
Today, we may grumble that we have to take out the recycling or
sort our trash into different categories. What is unique about World
War II is that nobody complained. Americans were united by the
patriotic spirit to recycle. They were excited to clean out their junk
and take it to a scrap metal drive. This enthusiasm meant the United
States had the materials it needed to win the war.
CLASSROOM ACTIVITY:
Extension Activity (taken from the book World War 2 For Kids by Richard Panchyk)
Collect all empty cans around your house for a week and put them into a bag. Also look for any scrap
metal you may have—paper clips, old toy cars, anything else you can find. At the end of the week, put
the bag on your bathroom scale and see how may pounds of scrap you collected. Now imagine if 10
million other children had collected the same amount of scrap that week!
COMMON CORE
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.2 Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular
details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.7 Integrate information presented in different media or formats (e.g.,
visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue.
