Human Hair Mats Clean Oil Spills. Why Don'T Big Companies Use Them? | World Wide Waste

Posted on 23 February, 2022
Hair Care
By Anonymous

Most big oil spills are cleaned using chemicals or mats made with petroleum. One nonprofit uses human hair, which can soak up around five times its weight in oil, as an eco-friendly alternative.

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This machine, weaves human hair, to make mats - and this non-profit has been using them for decades to help clean up oil spills. I'M going to show how fast it soaks up the oil, how clear water pours off of it and the hair holds the oil one. Kilogram of hair can soak up around five times its weight in oil, i'm just trying to get every nook and cranny. Here i mean this is literally just the hair from your head, but for most cleanups oil companies use mats made from petroleum or spray chemicals that can make people sick. So if this method works, why aren't more oil companies using it to clean up their messes? Maybe the weirdness makes it you know just more interesting. I don't know we went to san francisco to see how hair mats can clean up worldwide waste matter of trust has been making hair mats since the year 2000 founder, lisa gautier sources, hair from salons in over 30 countries. We have what we call the hair force. The donated clippings arrive in small batches people mail this in every day we get - i don't know, roughly 10 or so envelopes a day. We get a lot of blondes, as you can always tell when we get a package from los angeles like right away, blah blah blah a lot of redheads in boston. This is probably from boston. We'Ve been told that we got a package of underarm hair from michael phelps and the olympic swimming team. The team also uses animal fur clippings from alpaca, buffalo, sheep, etc. Llamas lisa and her team of felters start by cleaning the bags of donations. A lot of these were swept off the floors of hair salons pins cigarettes, food, anything sharp anything hard that might break the needles. All of that is garbage. I don't find it gross at all. I have a lot of hair and i it doesn't bother me um, but - and i you know it's part of the charm of it - the felters lay out the human hair on this bed of dull nails and start to layer it with animal fur and fleece. We had to learn that we needed to not use sharp nails because it would start to slice. The hair and david invented this for us and he created it so that this thing just lifts up and it's really easy for us to remove it afterwards we get out, make it more neat and faster. Then these machines tighten the fibers. The final product looks and feels like a doormat feel how like sturdy, that is, it's really sturdy. The idea to use hair to clean oil spills started in 1989, with phil mccrory, a hair stylist from alabama. He was watching the exxon valdez oil spill in williamson alaska and on cnn it was showing the otters covered in oil and the water around them. A little bit cleaner, phil looked down at the oily head of hair, he was shampooing and it just sort of snapped for him. You shampoo, because hair collects oil. I cut, you know a pound of hair every couple of days. All this could be going to clean up oil spills so 10 years after phil came up with the idea, lisa partnered, with him to scale up at first. They stuffed nylon stockings with hair, to make booms shaped like sausage, we're going to stop doing as many booms as we have because they needed the nylons, which was again plastic to hold them together and we're going to start doing more mats because mats, add surface area And so it just collects even more oil. That idea was put to the test in 2010 during the largest oil spill in american history. Bp'S deepwater horizon spewed four million barrels of oil into the gulf of mexico over three months and lisa's team got a flood of donations. We just started to get in ponytails from people, just you know, cutting it off and then, of course it was spring and it was sheering season. Um and there's turns out there's buffalo herds in the united states, so there was a lot of fleece just coming at us and trucks and mail trucks and everything it was. It was fantastic and overwhelming. We had 19 warehouses about 100 000 square feet each from the florida keys all the way to texas right on the water, because people are just so generous. Lisa says that a representative from bp reached out to her about a partnership. Insider asked bp about that. But the company didn't get back to us. In the end the oil giant didn't deploy her hair booms. Noah a governmental organization helped run the cleanup effort. Scientists concluded that hair booms weren't as effective at removing oil as booms made with polypropylene an oil derivative. The booms would get water all to get saturated in water, become heavier than the water and start to sink in the water and in whatever oil they had on it. Sunk with it and recovery was very, very difficult trying to get those back out of the environment. You don't see that with the poly booms, these polys do not absorb water. Like our hair. Does bp instead tried to burn the oil off, but the fires only covered a small percentage of the spill. The company also sprayed dispersants to dissolve the oil and push it toward the ocean floor where much of it remains today and those chemicals can make people sick. But the consensus was that the oil was less harmful at the bottom of the ocean than washed up on shorelines. It'S a trade-off. Sometimes they use the word net environmental benefit, but it's not net palace. It'S net less bad, still locals along the coast, used lisa's hair mats to protect their beaches. The epa told us that our bp response was the largest grassroots mobilization they had ever seen, and i was out there in you know mississippi alabama, louisiana, texas and florida. Eventually, bp was able to plug the leak on its own, but matter of trust proved it could mobilize thousands of people to address an epic catastrophe. The number of large oil spills has gone down in recent years, but matter of trust is now focused on a much more common problem: motor oil that drips from cars on the road and makes its way to the ocean. There'S many ways that oil gets spilled and the way that we concentrate on is oil that contaminates our waterways is actually just drips on the i'm mixing with rain water and getting into storm drains and those drips add up to over 180 million gallons per year. That'S 16 times the amount spilled by the exxon valdez, another use for the hair mats. The us air force is experimenting with them to manage chemical waste on its bases, they're, doing a very large system with contaminated water reservoirs and once the mats have done their job. Soaking up oil, how does matter of trust plan to get rid of them? It actually can break down into compost. It takes a really long time and it's not our number one idea of for the circular economy. What we think is better is if we have really clean incineration even as she grows her business lisa wants to make sure her. Hair map process remains an open source technology. Phil mccrory had a patent which expired, and we all decided that it's everybody's hair and we're a public charity and we thought that it was best not to renew it, and we just thought it's something that should be offered to the world. She'S shipped her machines to more than a dozen partners around the world. We just had a really great meeting a big zoom meeting with all of our partners around the world, and everybody was super jazzed because i think we're just getting into that next level. Now, where we're looking at how to send out more and more machines - and we have one in london one in wales - you know france, switzerland, finland, athens, greece, tokyo, santiago, chile and she says it's possible to do this work from home. For us cottage industry is the future. Anybody can make a little felted experiment just by putting a bunch of hair and fur in your shoe and walking around in it for a while, the heat from your heels and the sweat and the um and the jostling from your shoe. You pull it out and you will get a little a little matte and you've tried this. Oh yeah, you

Comments

The Yeagers: The fact they didn't want to renew the patent because they wanted the world to be able to use their idea to help them. Just wow, that's true humanitarian work right there. Bless them all.

Red Wine: I just went to their site to donate my hair and it looks like they aren’t taking many donations right now due to being at capacity at their warehouses which is fantastic news! Thank you Insider for highlighting this company:)

°Rioliega°: These hair mats could potentially be created into large mats that could be dragged across the water using boats! This would cause the mats not to sink and retrieval could be easy. It might tangle some ocean life though, and would have to be used in smaller chunks in smaller areas, but all good things have some cons to them.

1386_Somya Y: You can collect oil by using wood powder too. When my father was a little kid, he noticed a lot of this wood powder near a wood work place, and he also realised how much oil could be collected by it. I don't know if anyone has used the idea yet, but seemed like a cool thing so shared.

Patrick Kennedy: The NOAA: "The hair mats became waterlogged and sunk making retrieval very difficult" Also the NOAA: "The oil being chemically sunk to the bottom of the ocean is considered a 'net environmental benefit'"

The Bone: This is how eco-friendly innovation should be. It might not be the best as synthetic but over time hopefully we can get it close or better than synthetic

DahliaOWO: I love this so much! I hate it when the environment gets ruined and it can be cleaned up so .. peacefully and without more waste being made I've been losing my chunks of my hair for almost a year now and this makes me feel better mentally and that even if I lose my hair, I could donate it to these people to help the environment PLEASE KEEP UP THE WORK

Johnathan The Human: What’s so wonderful about these is that there will never be a shortage. Humans grow hair naturally, and some grow it back really quickly.

Design Education: This is incredible !! Oil companies have to get on this Also that guy talking about using chemicals to get rid of the oil spill as being better than trying to find a way to keep the hair mats floating is crazy

cheesy cheez: Loving this kind of news. People doing stuff about the problems of our world, sharing ideas, open sourcing. This is how we work together to chip away at climate debt.

Brendan: I don’t know why nobody thought of it before, this is brilliant. Hair is so notoriously good at holding oil and grease, we have an entire industry dedicated to making soaps that remove it.

SnarfBeats: Kudos to this wonderful woman and her team. They are making a positive difference in the world.

Scizor Sky: This is amazing, they are working extra hard to clean up someone else's mess. ❤️

yackawaytube: I've heard about the use of hair to absorb oil over 30 years ago. Weird it took so long for a company to capitalize on this. The other benefit is there is an infinite supply of human hair.

Sukon Med: My jaw dropped when I saw how hair sucked the oil. Kudos for innovation

Marga Esperanza: When we had a minor spill near our seas many inmates in our local prisons had a head shaving party. They donated their hair for the cleanup, it was really cool to see!

Coconüts!: Wow that's such an obvious thing about the animals fur when you see it and realise it's just mammalian hair and it really does soak up a lot of oil love it!

Tyler659: I really do love this idea, anything that can help our environment in return can help us as well too!

Will Engelmann: Id love to see human hair implemented in more industries. With almost 8 billion of us now, we should find something to do with it

Pipi's DIY Art and Crafts: I was a hairstylist for 10 years (2001-2011) and NEVER heard of this!! Soo much hair went in the trash that could have been recycled!!!! What an amazing thing! I hope they figure out how to make it really work long term! This is truly innovative!

msjithy: I already know this as I have seen this more than a decade ago in local news in the Philippines. I was already wondering why it was not given a huge exposure worldwide. Probably because no international media is interested about it. Now it seems like it is a great news just because BI featured it here in YT. In any case, i am hoping to see progress in this topic.

Bee Free: Wish I heard about this sooner! I've been losing hair like crazy thru out the pandemic. This is a great idea

Bonochi Bear: Omg. I wish I could donate all my hair that’s falling out daily. I love the work these people are doing ❤️

Jelly Punk: What a noble cause and a fantastically enthusiastic team! Kudos to Matter Of Trust and all their affiliates!

Seige Drakonera: I just showed this to my uncle and he's thrilled. He works at a huge repair shop/scrap parts lots not too far from major waterways an the sea, so he has been wanting to find ways to keep all the oil from going into the gutters every time it rains. This is really a neat idea that definitely deserves more funding.

Lemon Lu: Kudos to them!! I could never do their job, mats of hair, wet hair and hair all over the place make me gag I don't know why. I'm glad companies are giving use to things that would normally be considered trash.

Jessica Luis: I remember back in elementary school early 2000s I made a 3rd grade science project on this. How we could use hair to clean up the oil spill in the golf of Mexico when it happened. Well technically my sister did I just took credit. I always wondered where she got the idea. Now I know that it has actually been around.

Lindsey Burnside: It would be really nice if the description box contained more information about this nonprofit, hair mats and boons used for drains!

iBonnie TH: It’s crazy all the kinds of things you can use for hair. I didn’t know about this. This whole entire time I’ve been using my hair as mulch, compost piles and even using my hair as birds nest for my bird houses outside.

Devan Browne: I like how the guy first said the hair booms were a bad idea because they would sink to the ocean floor and then be impossible to retrieve, and then went on to explain how they used a toxic spray to force a bunch of oil to sink to the ocean floor and then never retrieve it. So what was the problem with the booms again?

Jay: This is truly incredible. Great work, I am actually blown away right now

Stijn Engels: All I can imagine is that this is more expensive to produce on a big scale than the current solution

sleepyfromstress: I think the reason some people might be uncomfortable with it is the fact that it comes from humans - not that it’s hair. The difference being that if this material is recognized as resourceful, there exists a possibility for inhumane harvesting (although at the moment it’s donations and such). Big companies have no morals.

Dan Cooper: Thank you for your efforts and your innovation. We all owe you one.

Dishari Bera: The fact that she decided against renewing the expired patent, shows how dedicated she is in turning this into a mass mobilizing effort, irrespective of boundaries and state lines. We are destroying the environment, and it's admirable to see people rising above petty politics, in order to account for the damage (no matter the scale) that we, as a species, are responsible for (knowingly, or unknowingly).

Kate Handsome: What happens to the mats after they have absorbed the oil, how and where do you dispose the mats?

Fur animation: This is such an amazing solution! There should be hair bins in barbers shops so there is as much as possible

Kate Alekseeva: This is so cool! Thank you for shining a light on stories like this one!

Dr Larken: I would love to participate in this my hair is literally almost 3 feet long and I plan on cutting in the summer I know where it’s going!

Ryan Brown: When there's a spill, oil companies are fined based on how much oil is spilled. If you clean up the oil with mats like this, you can measure, pretty precisely, how much oil is cleaned up. But if the companies spray dispersants (soap), then the oil disperses and is hard to quantify. They pay less in fines.

Nonya Bidness: Definitely more eco-friendly. Hence, the rest of the oil industry will turn its nose up at it no matter what it is unless the product is: 1. made of more petroleum stuff they can make money off of and look good using it (like what they use), or 2. eventually these companies are forced to stop using something over a lawsuit that kills someone, ruins ground water, makes them look bad, etc. Problem remains however: now that it's in the hair, what do you do with oil soaked hair?

Cassius: I only saw Caucasian and Asian hair in the video. Straight and smooth. Does it work with African hair too? They tend to be coarse and rough. Does it provide the same effectiveness for these mats? Better, maybe worse? Or maybe they're totally ineffective? Honest curiosity.

Sunsher: Not enough people are talking about companies dodging responsibilities when it comes to oil spills.

Cadistra: This is incredible! She's a great innovator and a real hero!

laernulieNlaernulieNlaernulieN: What a great idea and what's even greater is she seems like she's genuinely doing it for the good of the planet, not her bank balance. Also, respect to all the people chopping off their hair to donate.

GAIL S: Why hasnt this been made as a huge news story but more than that made into a real movement that literally the world, each and every person who cuts their hair can help save so much in this world. Theres always a way to solve a problem but people need to hear about it so problem solving can be made at a world wide level especially with the patent being ended like that made me cheer even more for this incredible opportunity to help the world. It's just hair but with all those animals getting shaved regularly why waste it when it can really be utilized.

IJ Layugan: Lisas a true legend. I knew that human hair can be used for soaking up oil from oil spills, my dad told me they used hair to soak the oil spills from a pipe thats by a river

Miqa Gomez: We need more people who have her values to lead ♥️

Steven Cole: Absolutely amazing very well done.

Stephanie Chavez: I'm a hairdresser and I heard of this many years ago. Just the other day a customer of mine asked if the hair clippings served purpose for anything other than trash. I responded with Yes!! They use hair for oil spills...I wish there were recycling bin for hair in hair salons. Keep up the good work guys!!

George De Cruz: "Hair Force" I just can't express how genius that is and clever

Mehsina Marin: What a great idea . More companies should use it.

Velin: These hair mats could potentially be created into large mats that could be dragged across the water using boats! This would cause the mats not to sink and retrieval could be easy. It might tangle some ocean life though, and would have to be used in smaller chunks in smaller areas, but all good things have some cons to them.

Hey Mikey: Hopefully no one else can try to patent the technology and force them out/to pay for using their own technology… Also, I’m wondering how often the workers get head lice from dealing with all the hair donations…at least the lady didn’t have her own hair pulled back, so it could easily get contaminated, imo…

Brittany Galvin: Isn’t it amazing to see how he noticed that the hair on the otters absorbed the oil and related it to how we shampoo to get rid of the oil in our hair? This realization of how what’s in front of us can inspire great innovations that help the environment for years to come.

zeba mill: To be honest: I would like to make a cooperation here in my city, collect all the hair salons together so I could pick once a week the hair up and just send it to them. I really want to make a difference and push it!!! How can I help?

Flowerdough: I like how they complain about it being hard to retrieve hair holding oil at the ocean floor then use really harmful chemicals to get it stuck at the bottom

Jenn J: I literally came across this by looking to see how to make paper.... why have I not heard of this? Poor genius!! You would think these oil companies would advertise for your hair!! Pure, safe way to clean their atrocities...

Erika Butterfly: Hm. Makes me wonder if homemade hair mats might be useful for cleaning around the house. It wouldn't be antibacterial, but if it soaks up oil, the other cleaning products used could be less aggressive. Maybe?

Fe Jung: I "love" how it's easier for them to burn/spread chemicals, instead of finding a solution to recover the hair mats hope to see more of these eco-friendly solutions being massively supported in the future!

Nathaniel wowchuk: I like how within the first minute they answer the question "companies use mats made of petroleum". Thats why oil companies wont use these

Lee Yi: Super cool! The petroleum business should seriously look into this!

Sepideh Sa: What happens to the hair mats after they absorb oil? is it possible to recycle them?

Jay Bliss: I was literally in shock, mouth open, when i saw how quick the oil just disappeared!

P N: She is a role model. The kind of person children should look up to.

Thanks to the Water: Very nice idea indeed... i use my hair for compost. For me the main concern of this idea is the recycling. What does it mean by clean incineration? mmmm... the idea is great indeed, but evolution is needed. Glad to hear that she has opened the technology for a global union interested on the topic to join forces here. Really really a great green seed here. I can see a brilliant future in this topic indeed. Great work!

Roi Joo: I really love this channel. Great job inside news

Seeker Wonderer 🙏: It is good to see how people are utilising their skills to create innovative ways to help the planet

Michael Bedford: Human hair 'needle-felt' (as they're making here) has been used for high quality carpet underlay for many decades. China has been a major exporter of human hair for ages.

Mila Lawson: I work in a salon and we use sustainable salons where we can recycle or sustainability dispose all parts of what we use in the salon (foils, hair, chemicals etc). We always collect the hair in a separate bin and send it off. I knew it cleaned oil spills but didn't know the details, so this was so incredibly interesting to watch and see the process. I actually didn't know how effective hair was at soaking up the oil! I feel so proud to belong to a salon that made the choice to be a part of this movement

Darryl Washington: Keeping the world clean I love it" thank you for your help

ckyeli kio: Instead of burning the oil filled hair mats, can the used hair mats be put into underground reservoirs and develop into crude oil over time?

Woahdude: Absolutely genius and inventive

Robert Bragg: Wool has dropped by a substantial amount. This would help that industry substantially and solve a huge problem. Not sure if anyone's checked this out yet but they should.

Sushiweed: I am in love with the fact they didn’t renew their patent. I can’t even explain how emotional it makes me feel that they are so caring and for the greater good of the world. I feel disgusted by the oil spills.

Grizzy: This is definitely something you could do with all that hair that gets stuck in the drain

Me Lost in this bad world: Love her positive vibe and attitude.. thumbs up.

Denis Chen: Instead of sending hair in small packages per person, hair salons should collect them and send them in bulk to save transportation costs significantly.

Daniel Suárez: Could be also used as insulation for houses :D

KBBF3: "Put hair clippings in your shoe to make a mat". This woman is bonkers... we need more people like her.

Justin R: *Me, when I find a hair in my food:* "It's part of the charm in it!"

Not Harvard: "We have what we call the 'Hair Force'." Lmao

evieisleavie: If anyone is curious how technologies like this are heard of all over the internet and then months later they get buried, it's not any kind of conspiracy (most of the time), it's just economics. Most of these start up ideas are extremely impractical and a lot of the talking points are often cut up to look misleadingly viable, or they'll use language that sounds hopeful but really, they don't understand how it works. "Clean incineration" when we're talking about oil-soaked human hair mats is suspicious to me, especially since she didn't go into it further and it isn't implemented yet. And just think of the quantity and speed of production of hair mats vs how many petroleum mats can be cranked out in an hour. Look at the ship spraying the chemicals, and how much ground it can cover in an hour. And listen to how many times the guy says "chemicals, that can make people sick" but doesn't go into whether or not the chemicals have been approved by governmental bodies for use on mass-scale oil cleanups, which they most certainly would have to be. The only thing that looks sound is the source of the product being dirt cheap, but just because the donations cost nothing doesn't mean such a criminally cheap product as petroleum doesn't outpace them in every category. Often times innovations covered by insider and other channels/media are unfortunately just not good enough to replace what we have today. The health of the planet is not as valuable as cheap convenience, in the world's current state.

James Baron: What do you do with the oiled hair once it’s been used to “clean up the oil” where do we dispose of it?

Joe K: As an environmental emergency responder (especially to oil/fuel/petroleum/hydrocarbon spills), I'd love to see an eco-friendly alternative to the current absorbent booms and pads that are made of polypropylene (a type of plastic called thermoplastic). Once they do their job of absorbing oil/fuel/etc., they are sent to landfills and processed there under state and federal regulations. A eco-friendly version has the potential to go to a facility where they would burn them for energy production INSTEAD of the landfill.

IGRojikku: 3:10 is literally “See a need, Fill a need” in the most genuine way. IYKYK

makk: Who knew this existed?! The amount of hair fall-out women have could make one of these easily! I'm glad I saw this. I know where to donate my hair now!

Kate: Me sitting here thinking how much of my hair could soak up oil over the years.

A fish in the sky: i know this a great way to re-use fallen hair, but i'm just really creeped out by hair mats.

Michael R: I was watching this and wondering if this would work : make the hair into a long belt shape and run it through a ringer to squeeze the oil out , could this then be used over and over ( on a boat at sea , right at the oil spill ) ?

Kur Norock: Regular old straw does the same thing. Some farmers showed the exact same test back during the BP oil spill.

Letres: It’s a brilliant idea! Human hair can’t be spun so it’s useless, but this??? This is so beautiful I love it

gavin b: well done, the oil companys that won't use this just goes to show you they really don't care. would be nice to see you get a contract and get payed for your great work

eklectiktoni: Since they're saturated with petroleum (and hair itself is flammable), maybe they could use it as a fuel source. I know we need to pivot away from petroleum, but might as well use these existing sources of oil as a fuel source rather than drilling for more oil. ‍♀️ Just a thought.

Sunny Fields: My cat and dog shed like CRAZY! I've made a little sombrero from my cat once. I would be ecstatic to donate their fur. My cat's fur is very soft, thick and looks like what they're using, but my dog's in short and pointy. I'm not sure that would be a good thing.

JoanKSX: Hmmm I'm actually keeping my hair to be long enough for hair donation at 'The Locks of Hope Association' so that they could possible make wigs for chemotherapy patients who experiencing great loss of hair during their chemo. Nice to know that hair soaks up oil and water! =D

Rainbow Butterfly Unicorn Kitten: Crazy how I saved this video to my watch later right before one about hair mats being used to clean oil spills lol. The way the world works.

Oyinda Omole-Ohonsi: Beautiful idea, I'm happy for her

Some Goofy Talks: This needs to go viral on so many levels. This is the perfect innovation, it is eco friendly and it is not harmful like the chemical and synthetic products.

Karen Earle: This is really amazing! But I'm looking at that sludge being pushed to the bottom of the ocean and thinking about bottom feeding sea life and then people eating this bottom feeders. Shrimp, oysters, clams, crabs, lobster.

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Human Hair Mats Clean Oil Spills. Why Don'T Big Companies Use Them? | World Wide Waste

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