I recently saw a video (watch it here!) that had featured an organization out of San Fransisco that is using human hair to clean up oil spills. The company, Matter of Trust, has been operating for several years now, and has received donations of thousands of pounds of hair to date.

Now, I don’t know a lot about oil spills, but their site has quite a bit of educational material (they even donate mats and booms to schools for student experiments) on their products. The photo above shows a boom. This is a recycled nylon that is then stuffed with hair. Matter of Trust is sent all kinds of hair – human, dog, cat, alpaca, etc; short, long, and any length in between. Hair has a special property companies have only been able to mimic synthetically. It is porous, so oil can be soaked up, but it also is almost entirely hydrophobic, shedding water at an incredible rate.

It is also completely natural and sustainable which is an amazing bonus. There are over 80,000 hair salons and more than 100,000 pet groomers in the United States alone. This company is donated all kinds of hair, which they then process into their products. There are several thousands oil spills each year, all ranging in size and deadliness.

Here is a short video in which this company demonstrates the effectiveness of a hair boom:

It’s wonderful to see companies like this take such a seemingly overlooked material and create something so influential. Check out all of their videos here!