Use of organic waste (chicken feathers from the markets) applying circular economy to the process of obtaining keratin for use in cosmetics.

Chicken feathers are organic waste mixed with blood and other protein residues, they are generated in the poultry industry and in food markets, these activities generate a billion kilograms of feathers each year. According to statistics, it is said that people from Lima consume 54 kilos of chicken per year, this means that around 5 kilos of feathers are generated for each person from Lima (population of Lima on average is 7.5 million). Chicken feathers contain a natural biopolymer called keratin, and it can be used as a raw material in the manufacture of various useful products such as wound cream preparation, etc.
The present investigation seeks to develop a process applying the circular economy as a strategy to valorize this waste and obtain a pharmaceutical grade keratin as a product, and balanced food as a by-product from the remaining protein mass.

Chicken meat is an important food for people, which is why the mass raising of chickens and their processing has generated large volumes of waste, including feathers with blood and other proteins, causing a serious environmental problem due to because these residues have been classified as hazardous waste.
Currently, the waste from the feathers generated in the food markets is not used properly and is disposed of together with other waste, which contributes to generating infectious sources, as well as a generalization of soil contamination, also impacting air quality.
It can be mentioned that in our country 5.4 million birds are slaughtered weekly for human consumption, whose approximate tonnage is 10 million and their waste commonly exceeds 9,200 tons of dry matter and 2.3 million tons of wet matter. feathers are composed mostly of keratin and are usually more than 70% of their weight. Despite the fact that this protein has a low nutritional biological value, it can have interesting cosmetological and pharmaceutical applications (Quintero 2017).
According to the World Health Organization, burns constitute a public health problem worldwide (WHO 2018).
In Peru, in the last 15 years, the percentage of minors who suffer burns due to hot liquids represents 70% of cases, with children between 1 and 4 years of age being the most vulnerable, followed by the group between 5 and 4 years old. 9 years. (Peruvian state platform 2017).