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

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This is an update of an earlier article.

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 plan was proposed by the San Francisco-based organization Matter of Trust, which calls for donations of hair and fur that are placed in nylon stockings and then used as booms to soak up the oil. According to the organization’s president, Lisa Gautier, the group has donors from all over the world and sends each donation to one of 19 warehouses along the Gulf Coast whose use has been donated to the organization.

As of May 5, the organization had collected more than 400,000 pounds of hair. She said the group has not been able to update the count because the donations won’t stop pouring in.

“The world is so full of generous people,” Lisa Gautier said in an e-mail interview. “This is proof.”

Despite the efforts of Matter of Trust, the Unified Area Command for the Deepwater Horizon/BP Response, in charge of coordinating the cleanup, announced Friday that while this suggestion was submitted to BP as an option for containing the oil spill, it was not considered feasible.

The command cited a February 2010 side-by-side field test conducted during an oil spill in Texas, in which a boom with commercial absorbents picked up more oil and much less water than a hair boom, “making it the better operational choice.”

“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. “One problem with the hair boom is that it became waterlogged and sank within a short period of time.”

In Louisiana, hair has been collected by many salons and dropped in locations for Matter of Trust. Lauren Underwood, a stylist at Aha! Salon in Houma, said the effort has attracted considerable support in her town. She said she has collected two SUV trunks full of hair thus far and has no intention of stopping.

“I was under the impression that BP was already using our booms to pick up the oil,” she said. “The other booms don’t work as well and are not as environmentally friendly.”

But there has been no confirmation from government officials or BP representatives that donated hair has been used in any cleanup efforts. And the disaster response command said on Friday that it was asking individuals and organizations to discontinue the collection of hair for use in hair booms.

Gautier said her group will continue to collect hair from salons and that the hair collected is staying in their warehouses for now. She said she had arrangements to provide it to local cleanup teams in the Gulf area, but that may be on hold given Friday’s announcement.

“We are lovers not fighters,” Gautier said. “This is a good karma program. It will work out as it should.”

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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.

The plan was proposed by the San Francisco-based organization Matter of Trust, which calls for donations of hair and fur that are placed in nylon stockings. The organization reported on its *website* [MatterofTrust.org]that its calls for donations had been answered from around the nation and world. According to the website, the organization has opened 19 warehouses spread along Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida that are receiving hair from donors.

The command announced Friday that while this suggestion was submitted to BP as an alternative for containing the oil spill, it was not considered feasible.

The command cited a February 2010 side-by-side field test conducted during an oil spill in Texas, in which a boom with commercial absorbents picked up more oil and much less water than a hair boom, “making it the better operational choice.”

“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. “One problem with the hair boom is that it became waterlogged and sank within a short period of time.”
In New Orleans hair and fur was being collected at the Spa in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Canal Street by an employee, Daisye Dykes, who could not be reached for comment Friday night. News outlets around the nation have reported local hair collection efforts to aid in the Gulf oil spill.

But the command said on Friday that it was asking individuals and organizations to discontinue the collection of hair for the hair boom.

Attempts by e-mail and telephone on Friday night to reach Lisa Craig Gautier and her husband, Patrice Olivier Gautier, who are listed on the website as the founders of the organization, were unsuccessful.

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