We all know how oily hair can get if we go too long past “wash” day. For most, a week is the threshold, although some can go longer while some opt for every day cleansing. Whether you enlist a liquid shampoo, shampoo bar or “no poo” options, cleansing is a vital part in a healthy hair regimen because it clears the hair and scalp of product build up and its natural tendency to retain its own oils. Because hair is porous, it absorbs oil and other substances almost magically, which makes washing a must. Because of this seemingly magnetic phenomenon, husband and wife team Lisa and Patrice Gautier propose our hair can be used to help retard the spread of oil from the most recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico without placing more biochemical stress on the fragile ecosystem of the area.
Lisa and Patrice created the Matter of Trust charity in 1998 in order to “link ideas, spark action and materialize sustainable systems”, or in other words, create eco-friendly solutions to tragedies such as the Gulf oil spill. Lisa, a mother of three and an extensive volunteer of the Jersey Wildlife Preservation, and Patrice, Vice President of the iTunes Store & iPhone Apps Store Engineering, conceived the idea for MofT before becoming parents and saw their vision as a way to take care of the planet they would be leaving for their children as well as children worldwide. Through their charity they have facilitated various programs that help reuse manmade materials to cut down on waste, enlist natural resources to provide aid and products vital to our society, and help to provide eco-education for activist organizations and concerned citizens. In 2000, Matter of Trust developed the brilliant idea that mats made from human and animal hair, as well as other naturally absorbent fibers, could be used to help clean up the over 2,600 oil spills that occur each year. These EPA approved mats can be used to safely soak up oil spills from drip pans during your car’s routine oil changes, as well as help to contain threats to human and animal life forms from such occurrences as the Gulf oil spill. The mats themselves are invented and patented by hair stylist Phil McCrory and are manufactured by Ottimat for industrial use.
"You shampoo, because hair collects oil. Hair is very efficient at gathering oil, skin oils off your face, oil pollution out of the air, and water, even petroleum oil spills,” states a quote from McCrory that’s listed on the Matter of Trust Website. “Hair is absorbant (as in ‘clings to’ unlike [absorbent] which is to ‘soak up.’) There are over 370,000 hair salons in the US and each collects about one pound of hair a day. Right now, most of that goes into the waste stream, but it should all be made into hair mats."
So for the past ten years MofT has been collecting hair from donation sources all across the globe and the resulting hair mats are providing amazing demonstrations of just how effective the mats are in “cleaning” oil spills. The hair collected can be of any texture, length, color or state (permed or relaxed) as long as it is clean and free of debris. Many salons and barbershops are now participating in the program, providing hair donations in recycled from product orders. And when it comes to disposal of the oil soaked mats, a study was completed that showed the mat could be detoxified by thermophilic compost, broken down by common earthworms then returned to the Earth as fertilizer in just two years’ time.
Although this seems like a viable solution to help in this moment of national crisis, officials at British Petroleum and state and federal authorities are discounting the effectiveness of the hair mats and hair booms, stating they “won’t work well” in comparison to commercial sorbet booms made of polypropylene.
Read more HERE.
Healthy Hair Wishes,
