Word: featherly
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...BUSINESS: The feather...
...plight of rock stars bereft of new material can’t help but make us sad. In this grand tradition, R.E.M’s new album, Around the Sun, is at some points so frankly ill-advised that one wonders if Michael Stipe had his ostrich feather boa tied too tightly, cutting off essential blood circulation to his brain...
...ALCHEMY GOES, THIS ISN'T THE most glamorous of experiments. No one is turning straw into gold here or even water into wine. But David Emery is on a mission to convert the poultry industry's trash--feathers, basically--into heavy-duty cash. Every so often a few tons of wet, filthy feathers are delivered to the abandoned factory Emery bought in Wheaton, Mo. (pop. 712). Emery, an industry veteran who specialized in removing meat from bone, sends the glop through a maze of machinery he cobbled together to clean, dry and position the feathers for slicing. Finally, a giant...
...many ARS researchers, the future is all about waste, particularly as an alternative to petroleum. The feather project, for example, can replace some of the fossil fuels used in plastics. Likewise, a surplus of soybeans inspired researchers to develop SoyScreen as an alternative to petroleum-based sunscreens. At ARS's flagship facility in Beltsville, Md., biodiesel, derived from vegetable oil, powers fleets of tractors and lawn mowers for the farms and even heats some of the buildings. Indeed, petroleum is prohibited in the carpeting (which is instead held together by soy-based urethane). The only permissible hand soaps and cleaning...
...Emery's Featherfiber Corp., which licensed the feather-separating technique from ARS five years ago, it's continuing to tweak the production method at its headquarters in Nixa, Mo., while seeking investment for a full-scale factory. Emery has already demonstrated several applications for the fiber, and the math should work in his favor: a pound of raw feathers is worth about 2¢, but could fetch roughly $1 as processed fiber. "I strongly believe," Emery says, "that in a very short period of time, processed poultry feathers will be worth more per pound than poultry meat." Then again, the technology...