Human Hair Is a Shocking Secret Weapon for Cleansing Up Oil Spills

Anyone who has expert the unbridled pleasure of hair day is conscious of merely how extremely efficient a head of hair is likely to be. Inside the arms of a proficient stylist, your hair will aid you improve your self-confidence, categorical your distinctive character, land a model new job, and presumably even entice a romantic affiliate. Inside the arms of Matter of Perceptionhowever—an ecological nonprofit that collects and recycles waste fibers like hair and fur clippings, fleece, feathers, and laundry lint—your hair may be succesful to do one factor way more spectacular: help save the setting.

For better than 20 years, Matter of Perception has been gathering hair and fur donations from hair salons, pet groomers, and farmers across the globe for the goal of making “hair mats” which will assist with oil spill cleanups.

Generally, oil spills on land are cleaned up using polypropylene mats which will be environment friendly nonetheless environmentally problematic. After all, polypropylene is a non-biodegradable plastic that’s made out of fossil fuels; using it to scrub up oil attributable to this truth requires drilling for way more oil. Hair and fur, nonetheless, are unhazardous, biodegradable, renewable, and intensely absorbent. Human hair, for instance, can take up roughly 5 cases its weight in oil, based mostly on Matter of Perception, which says a pound of hair can take in a liter of oil in decrease than a minute.

It’s smart when you contemplate it: The rationale individuals shampoo their hair is that it retains oil so successfully.

“It makes far more sense to utilize a renewable pure helpful useful resource to scrub up oil spills than it does to drill further oil to utilize to scrub up,” Lisa Gautier, Matter of Perception’s co-founder and president, knowledgeable CNN in a present interview.

Gautier established Matter of Perception in 1998 and conceived the group’s Clear Wave program—by the use of which it makes and distributes its signature hair mats—in 2001 when an Ecuadorian oil tanker carrying 243,000 gallons of diesel gasoline ran aground on San Cristóbal Island, which is part of the wildlife-rich Galápagos Islands.

Eager to help with the disaster, Gautier teamed up with hairstylist Phillip McCrory, who had experimented with using hair to absorb oil better than a decade prior, in 1989. Collectively, they designed mats and oil booms product of human hair and animal fur, which Matter of Perception continues to provide as we converse at its warehouse in San Francisco, and at native hubs in 17 utterly totally different worldwide places.

To this point, the group has produced better than 40,000 hair mats and better than 300,000 booms, tales CNN, which says Matter of Perception receives donations by mail; checks them for contaminants like particles, mud, and lice; then separates the hair and spreads it over a physique, which it subsequently runs by the use of a custom-built felting machine with a view to supply accomplished hair mats.

Matter of Perception’s merchandise have been used to scrub up not solely high-profile oil spills—along with the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which launched over 160 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico—however moreover non-emergencies like oil leaks from vehicles and gear. In every circumstances, oil can seep into soil and water, which could harm people, crops, and wildlife, based mostly on Matter of Perception, which says just one quart of oil can contaminate 1 million gallons of ingesting water if it enters the water present.

Although it’s an elegant reply, it isn’t glorious. Hair mats can solely be used as quickly as, for instance, and would possibly solely be disposed of by the use of incineration or composting. And inside the case of the latter, the following compost isn’t acceptable for rising meals. Moreover, the mats aren’t very environment friendly at absorbing oil from sand on seashores—although it’s worth noting that polypropylene mats aren’t any larger in that regard.

Nonetheless, hair mats are a surprisingly environment friendly software program inside the wrestle for a cleaner planet. And since Matter of Perception hasn’t patented its designs, all that’s needed to provide them are hair clippings—of which there are masses, based mostly on Gautier, who says there are roughly 900,000 licensed hair salons inside the U.S. alone, each of which could merely decrease a minimal of a pound of hair per week.

“Anyone might make a hair mat,” she knowledgeable CNN. “It creates inexperienced jobs, it cleans water, it reduces waste in landfill, and it’s promoting renewable belongings.”