Lakemoor salon collecting hair for mats used to soak up oil spills

Lakemoor salon owner Linda Whyte loves seeing the piles of hair that collect on her floor each day. Yes, it means business is good, but Whyte also looks at the waste in an eco-friendly way.

Instead of sweeping the clippings into the trash, Whyte and her stylists collect the strands, put them in plastic bags and ship them to a California company that manufactures them into mats used to soak up oil at spill sites.

Whyte, who owns the Atmosphair Spa, said she heard the idea from one of her clients.

"I've always thought there could be some use for the hair clippings," she said. "It sounded very cool and a good way to help the environment."

The San Francisco-based, environmental group, Matter of Trust, began collecting hair in 2000 and receives dozens of boxes every week. Founder Lisa Gautier said things had been going well until the economy tanked. The Matter of Trust works with textile companies to make the mats and many of those companies have gone out of business.

"We have 18,000 pounds of hair sitting in trailers waiting to be manufactured," she said Friday. "It was easy to get these made a year and half ago. But now, at least 17 textile needle punch businesses have gone under."

Gautier said they've recently located a company in Rhode Island to do the work. E-mails will be going out to the 16,000 salons in its database to direct them to send the hair directly to that company to speed the process.

Phil McCrory, a hair stylist from Alabama, came up with the hair mat idea in the early 1990s. He was watching the clean up of a major spill and noticed there was less oil near otters that floated nearby. He figured the hair on the animals was soaking up the oil. After a few experiments, he devised a mat made of human hair and tested its soaking properties to prove his theory.

"Human hair is very absorbent. One quart of oil can be soaked up by one pound of hair," Whyte said. "There are nearly 370,000 hair salons in the United States and each collects about a pound a day," Whyte explained. "That's a huge potential for this cause."

With about 150 cuts per week, Whyte collects and donates nearly 30 pounds of hair each month.

It may seem that oil spills are uncommon, but there were more than 2,500 spills worldwide in 2008, according to Gautier. The group also stuffs hair into nylon stockings that are turned into booms to contain the more major spills.

Whyte said she's gotten good reactions from people in her shop.

"The response that we've had from our staff is really exciting," Whyte said. "Our clients feel good knowing they are contributing too."