Title:
A Chicken in Every Pot: Finding New Uses for
Feathers
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Chicken feathers are useful, and not just to a
chicken. Some go into pillows, coats and other
products. But countless chicken feathers go to
waste. In the United States, billions of chickens
are produced yearly. Most of their feathers are
thrown away. But instead of being buried in
landfills, some feathers could find a future in
plastics. Scientists in the Washington area have
been working with keratin, the main substance in
poultry feathers. One of the products they have
developed is a flowerpot. It may look like other
flowerpots. But the container breaks down in the
earth within one to five years. And as it breaks
down, it naturally releases nitrogen into the soil.
The flowerpots are made by reducing chicken feathers
to a powder. Then the powder is formed into pellets
and shaped into pots. The environmentally friendly
flowerpot is the work of two researchers. Walter
Schmidt is with the Agricultural Research Service,
part of the United States Agriculture Department.
Masud Huda is with the Horticultural Research
Institute, a private organization.The institute's
research director, Mark Teffeau, says the flowerpot
works well for vegetables and small flowering plants
like geraniums and impatiens. Walter Schmidt has
been working to find uses for chicken feathers since
the nineteen nineties. Progress in two thousand two
showed that plastic made from feathers could be
formed like other plastics. He says feathers are
much stronger and last longer than another plant
material, cellulose. He says feathers are about
eight times as strong as cellulose.He points out
that traditional flowerpots made from
petroleum-based plastics can last much longer. But
he wonders if there is really a need. He says most
flowerpots are never re-used.He says: "Why would you
want a plastic that you use for a year to last for
two hundred years? It makes no sense. You want to
match the product with the use."Walter Schmidt and
Masud Huda are now adding another chicken product to
their flowerpots -- chicken waste. The waste will
add more nutrients to the soil as the pot breaks
down. The scientists say they hope their flowerpot
will be on the market in a year or two. And that's
the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. You can
find transcripts, MP3s, podcasts and archives of our
reports at voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
