A study reported at the American Chemical Society meeting suggests the millions of tons of chicken feathers discarded each year could be used to produce lighter, more environmentally-friendly plastics, BBC reports.

The concept presented by Yiqi Yang, from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, takes this idea further and uses the chicken feather to make up 50% of the mass of the composite.

As a result, the plastics produced require less polyethylene and polypropylene, which are derived from petroleum products.