I think it's a shame more real leather isn't used. It just goes to waste, but fake leather is cheaper.
Fake leather is such an annoying scam. Real leather can last for a century if taken care of, fake leather lasts a handful of years before it literally flakes away into nothing.<p>Though that reminds me of the time I bought a real leather couch set that had absolute garbage everything else, the legs broke after a couple of years. Really not the part I was expecting the manufacturer to have cheaper out on...
Things that can't be faked are going to be a mystery, reversing a phenomenon of just a few decades ago, when faking a thing perfectly was a miracle.
Given the incredible number of chickens that are processed every single minute across the world, this shouldn't be surprising but it's easy to see why you might be surprised if you never considered where all the stuff that isn't meat goes.
I found it pretty surprising. It would not have surprised me at all if we made fake plastic feathers and burned or buried even more real ones because it works out fractionally 'cheaper' to make new then collect and wash/treat the old.
It’s also because real feathers are similarly durable as plastic feathers would be. Plants are very cheap to grow as well, but plastic plants are nevertheless a thing.
Feather meal is used in animal feed.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather_meal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather_meal</a><p>Manure is also fed to cows.<p><a href="https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/g2077" rel="nofollow">https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/g2077</a><p>"Poultry litter can be used as a feedstuff... There are currently no federal or Missouri regulations governing the use of poultry litter as a feedstuff"
Indeed. Also very nearly always true with "fake" skeleton leaves used for crafting.<p>A small percentage (usually enlarged designs of particular shapes) are made with sophisticated latex presses, but most are chemically-stripped and treated real leaves (Ficus and suchlike) because it's simply easier to make them in bulk.<p>I was amazed by this at first — I bought some for a photography project simply assuming that their flexible, slightly springy nature meant they were artifically-made latex. But no: ficus leaves automatically processed in baking soda, essentially. The latex ones aren't even cheaper.
Well, ficus (ficus elastica and others) are <i>natural</i> latex - their sap is one of the forms of latex that occurs naturally and used to be harvested, but these days latex is harvested from a different plant (hevea brasiliensis, the "rubber tree")<p>So it's not so much as "the latex ones are cheaper" as "the real leaves are already made of latex, so why artificially make one out of latex?"
That explains why the fake rubber moss I bought has an odd smell and the occasional bit of what seems like a real decayed leaf. Definitely feels like rubber, but if you're saying they took some real moss and chemically converted it to rubber-like material, that makes sense.
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