synthetic 化学合成 人工
petroleum 石油 【略】pet.fabric 織物｛おりもの｝
feather 羽、羽毛｛うもう｝
landfill ごみ廃棄場
fluff up けば立てる、膨らむ
fluff 毛羽 けば
microscopic 微小
textile 布地｛ぬのじ｝、織物 fabric
insulate 隔離 絶縁
vie 競う、争う 張り合う
You’ve probably heard of the oil problem we have in this country.
The problem is, we use a lot of it. In fact, we use way more than is safe, given the dangers of global warming.
What you might not know is that we don’t just use oil to drive our cars. Oil is also used to make all sorts of synthetic products, such as petroleum-based fabrics. Which makes you think, maybe there’s something else we could use to make the same kinds of fabrics instead.
A professor of Textile Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, named Yiqi Yang, had the same idea. He came up with a suggestion: why don’t we use chicken feathers?
Now before you laugh, think about it. At the moment, the U.S. poultry industry puts out about 1.8 billion kilograms (four billions pounds) of waste material every year, including a whole lot of chicken feathers. All those feathers generally go into landfills, where they don’t do anybody any good.
After all, chicken feathers have filaments full of tiny air pockets. These allow the feathers to fluff up when they’re on the chicken, which keep it warm. That same microscopic air-pocket quality could make for excellent textiles, that would insulate well without being heavy.
Yang says that people might not think of chicken feathers as useful right now, but that could change. Maybe some day soon we’ll be vying to the latest fashion trend, cool, comfortable chicken shirts.