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Now mats made of natural hair are being used to mitigate the disastrous environmental effects of these spills.
San Francisco nonprofit Matter of Trust (matteroftrust.org) has been fashioning recycled hair into products that soak up spilled oil since 2002.
It takes about a pound of recycled hair to make a hair mat that's a foot square and half an inch thick, said Lisa Craig Gautier, who established Matter of Trust with her husband, Patrice Olivier Gautier.
Last year over 2,600 oil spills occurred around the world. Most had a devastating impact on the environment. Phil McCrory, a hair stylist from Alabama, was the first to discover how hair can help remedy this problem.
While watching CNN coverage on the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, he noticed the fur on the Alaskan otters was completely soaked with oil. He began testing how much oil he could collect with the hair clippings from his salon. Phil then invented the hairmat, a natural product that acts like a sponge.
Every year, an estimated 706 million gallons of oil enter our planet's oceans. Used motor oil accounts 363 million gallons spilled into our oceans. Other startling statistics include:
? Routine ship maintenance and washing containers account for 137 million gallons of oil in our oceans.
? Natural seepage of oil bubbling up from the sea bottom dump 62 million gallons
? Large Spill accidents spill 37 million gallons
? Offshore drilling leaks 15 million gallons
? Air pollution generates 92 million gallons flowing into our oceans.
Mats woven from human hair are successfully alleviating these man-made environmental disasters.
"A mat can soak up a quart of oil," Gautier said, "and it can be wrung out and used up to 100 times -- as long as there's no sand in it."
There are over 300,000 hair salons in the US and each cuts an average of a pound of hair per day. Even noted Paul Mitchell salons participate in this worthwhile program. Participating salons pay out of pocket for postage to send their swept up hair clippings to Matter of Trust's warehouse spaces.
Matter of Trust takes any type of human hair -- straight, curly, permed, straightened, processed and dyed -- "but only HEAD hair," says its website.
Salons and businesses can learn more about participating in this extraordinary program at http://tinyurl.com/362ydc.
This amazing mat has other practical applications. Since hair provides a slow protein release, it's excellent for flower growers as a natural fertilizer. For more information on this, see SmartGrow.net.
