Recession Cuts Operation That Uses Hair To Clean Up Oil

Matter of Trust, a nonprofit that uses human hair scraps to make mats to clean up oil spills, finds itself with 18,000 pounds of hair and nobody to process it. Lisa Gautier, who runs the organization, says that the recession has closed many of the textile makers that produced the mats and the warehouse that stored them. Unfortunately for Lisa the hair keeps piling up. From the article: "Hair is good at soaking up oil because, up close, the strands are shaped like a palm tree with scalelike cuticles. Drops of oil naturally cling inside those cuticles, says Blair Blacker, chief executive of the World Response Group. A pound of hair can pick up one quart of oil in a minute, and it can be wrung out and reused up to 100 times, Mrs. Gautier says."

Comments

Re:BP?

[asukasoryu]

Anyway, I'm guessing the scale of the problem is beyond putting hair on it to solve the problem. 18,000 pounds of hair which can theoretically soak up 18,000 quarts of oil in a minute, or 4,500 gallons, that isn't much compared to the 100,000 gallons leaking out per day.

Way to contribute to the solution. You've been a great help. The hair mats are reusable. The real problem is manufacturing the mats now that the raw material is available. Who cares if it takes a while to clean this mess up. The important thing is that it gets done. You're Negative Nelly attitude is not going to improve the situation.