Feathers aren’t just for dusters anymore. The latest in green architecture may come from the chicken coop. Filipino scientist Menandro Acda has been developing a new low-cost building material made of cement and chicken feathers.
There’s no shortage of free feathers to use: Six percent of a chicken’s weight is feathers, and the Philippine poultry industry produces 40 million chickens per year. The disposal of feather waste is a huge problem. The keratin protein that makes feathers sturdy (it’s also found in hair and butterfly wings) takes a long time to degrade in landfills. Burning the stuff releases greenhouse gases. So why not use all that fluff to build houses?
