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Hair: an unorthodox solution
Matter of Trust, an American NGO, thinks it may have found a solution to clean up the BP oil spill.
“It’s truly a surge in philanthropy,” Lisa Craig Gautier told The New York Times about the response to her non profit endeavour to clean up the BP oil spill that is threatening the Gulf coast and its many inhabitants – from the bluefin tuna, to the bobcat, to the more obvious pelican.
In this case, what she is alluding to is a donation of a very particular kind. It is renewable, biodegradable, sometimes human and cheap.
It is hair. Although Gautier is also open to wool, fur and clippings.
The self christened ‘international natural fiber recycling movement’ is coordinated by Matter of Trust, a San Francisco based NGO that has been going since 1998 and is run by Gautier herself and her husband.
The philosophy is simple. Hair is a natural oil absorbent, and has already been used for smaller scale oil spill operations. The challenge here is to be able to rise to the challenge of making it work on a far, far larger basis.
As much as this may come across as a questionable and simplistic process, the system, Gautier claims, is totally legitimate.
The reaction to the call for donations has been outstanding. Salon owners, groomers, wool farmers and simple individuals alike have been sending in whatever contribution they can from cities all over America, but also in countries across Europe and further afield.
Collection points are sprouting up along the Gulf and warehouses have been lent to the cause to store what is turning out to be hair by the tons. Eager to get on with the job at hand, a courageous team of volunteers have already got to work to make the booms (hand-made tubes made out of recycled nylon and stuffed with hair) and mats and are lining them up and down the coast.
Will it work?
The world watches on.
