A dollar here, a dollar there—handling cash every day, we've probably started to take American currency's actual, physical resilience somewhat for granted. After all, who hasn't accidentally put a few bills through a lather-rinse-repeat cycle or crumpled them up, stuffing a wad back in pockets in a hurry. Did you know that for the longest time—since the 1800s, in fact—U.S. dollars have been printed on a cotton-paper blend supplied by Crane—yes, the stationer? And, for the longest time, since the 1800s, Crane & Co. has gotten 30 percent of its cotton in the form of denim scraps from the garment industry! But then, in the '90s and '00s, something happened in fashion that changed the money-making business forever. That something was spandex—and it started to make its way into nearly all mass-produced jeans in the United States. According to a report in the Washington Post, the winds of change and consumer preference for stretchiness (essential for the skinny jeans trend we've seen pretty much take over since the early 2000s) have basically decimated Crane's denim scrap supply. "There's no denim products out there that we can find that's basically not contaminated," Crane's managing director of global sourcing told the