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.

Since late April, salons in different parts of the country have been gathering excess hair from haircuts in hopes it would be used to clean up the oil spill. But even though the idea was rejected on Friday by the people in charge of all response efforts, neither the salons nor the organization that started the initiative are letting up.

The use of booms made of hair and fur in the efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was rejected on Friday by the Unified Area Command for the Deepwater Horizon/BP Response, which is in charge of all response efforts.