This is an update of an earlier article.

For the past month, Laura Underwood, a hair stylist in Houma, La., has swept the floor of the Aha! salon, gathering hair clippings and stuffing them into grocery bags. She also asked other salons for their leftover hair but under one condition—that they wash it first. Before long, the back of her SUV was filled with bags of hair, making it hard to see out of her back window.

A Matter of Trust volunteer at the Destin, Fla., warehouse packing hair and fur donated from around the world into nylon pantyhose. The organization is hoping these hair booms will be used to aid the Gulf Coast oil spill. (Lisa Gautier/Matter of Trust)

Underwood, an environmental activist, is gathering hair clippings for hair booms. She understood that the nylons packed with hair and fur would be used to clean up the most recent oil spill. Matter of Trust, the organization that initiated the hair craze, is encouraging donors like Underwood to drop off the hair and fur that donors would otherwise dispose of.

“I love to clean up,” said Underwood. “I think they rely on modern technology too much, and sometimes they need to step back and see that nature works better.”

Underwood, who also works for animal rescue, discovered Matter of Trust while visiting Internet sites for ideas on ways to help the oil spill relief efforts. Being a hairstylist, she jumped at the opportunity to donate hair and wrote to other activists about the plan.

“I just wrote on all of my Facebook friends’ walls, and before I knew it, some guy from California was contacting me about shaving his sheep and sending me the fur,” she said.

Since this campaign began in April, Matter of Trust has received similar responses. As of May 5, the organization said it had received over 400,000 pounds of hair and fur.

It has been unable to update these numbers because of the overwhelming response, said Lisa Gautier, president of Matter of Trust.

“It is pouring in now from all over North America and beyond,” Gautier said in an e-mail interview. “And we weren’t counting on the alpaca farms—we have to do a new tally.”

According to Gautier, the 35,000 participating salons each cut about one pound of hair per day and dog groomers cut three to five pounds per day. In addition to this, classrooms, scouting troops and plenty of individuals are donating their own hair.

“It goes on and on,” Gautier said. “There is so much hair.”

Matter of Trust has been storing the hair donated in 19 warehouses along the Gulf Coast preparing for the word from local hazardous materials teams that the hair was needed. They might be waiting longer than they anticipated, though, after the latest announcement by the Deepwater Horizon Response Team. The team said on Friday that it was no longer considering hair booms as an option to soak up the oil.

“Our priority when cleaning up an oil spill is to find the most efficient and expedient way to remove the oil from the affected area while causing no additional damage,” said Charlie Henry, NOAA’s Scientific Support Coordinator in Robert, La. Hair booms were used in a field test in Texas, but, “One problem with the hair boom is that it became waterlogged and sank within a short period of time,” Henry said. It also did not collect as much oil as commercial booms.

The Deepwater Horizon Response Team and BP have ruled out the use of hair booms, but they do encourage suggestions for more cleanup solutions.

“As of yesterday there were 77,000 calls made to the call center and 21,000 e-mails,” a BP spokesman, John Curry, said. “Clearly there are lots of people that want to provide ideas; maybe that’s how this thing started, but I don’t know.”

Curry also stressed that it was not BP’s decision to reject the idea of the hair booms but was the call of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Although it seems this entire project has been a waste of time, Gautier believes it will work out.

“The county hazmat teams are mad and contacting us,” she said, though she would not say which authorities she had been in touch with. “We are lovers, not fighters. This is a good karma program; it will all work out as it should. It’s a Matter of Trust.”

Underwood is also not discouraged and still believes that the hair booms are a good idea. She says that public pressure has helped in situations like this before and it might again. She is still encouraging her clients to continue gathering their trimmings and is even looking for customers to shed a bit more for the cause.

“People shave their head for cancer every day,” she said. “So why not for the earth?”

Rosa Warren contributed reporting

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.