From Poultry Poop to Possibility
Usoshi Chatterjee scoops a handful of poultry-waste-derived biochar.
The way Usoshi Chatterjee sees the world, just about any form of trash should be considered a potentially useful thing. To her, chicken poop is like gold that can help save environmentally critical wetlands known as peat bogs.
“I’m fascinated by the idea of converting resources that are typically considered unusable and causing issues in the environment and turning them into something beneficial,” she explained.
A PhD student in AGNR’s Department of Environmental Science and Technology, Chatterjee’s primary research focuses on finding uses for chicken waste, also known as poultry litter, from farms on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore. Chicken farmers often struggle to dispose of the copious amounts of waste their birds generate, but burning it through a special process can turn it into a carbon-rich, absorbent material called biochar.
