Can human hair save the world's oceans? | Focus on Europe

A hairdresser makes use of her customers' cut hair to make special mats to help clean the coast and sea in event of oil spills in her native country Wales. Human hair is a natural oil absorber.

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#Hair #OilSpill #Ocean

[doctorbigsmiles]

Like putting a bandaid on a leak in a dam

[rickh]

10yrs later.
"Helicopters have landed on the giant hairball in the Pacific. Scientists hope to study the new fauna that has evolved on the floating keratin biotope..."

[japie]

Adele, this is so great! Hopefully projects can be implemented on a large scale in the near future.

[derekhieb]

First heard about hair for oil absorbent during the gulf oil spill offshore horizon disaster in 2010 while working for Marine spill response corp. The only problem is this needs to be scalable as I regularly use conventional oil absorbents diapers for marine industry.

[williamlai]

With all those fancy hair gel, hair spray, shampoo and hair dye you put into it in your everyday life? I don't think so.

[vj]

Probably also collect the hair from dogs and cats, they got lots of hair loss every day and grooming!

[live_free_or_perish]

There is a huge supply of hair if they need it. Tons of hair gets pulled out of wastewater every day. It interferes with wastewater processing so they have to take it out.

[CMoore]

I think that’s very Nice what they are doing!!!♥️👍🇺🇸

[thatguyswavomeer]

Every little helps! But how about we stop oil spills by not using fossil fuels at all?

[LollyAndSweets]

It’s a step in the right direction; much more eco friendly than the current modality of using a synthetic, bad for the environment, product

[SorminaESar]

Oooo DW News, you are so brave to give us the difference news about hair. Hair is a crown of women.

[joewilder]

Perhaps they could also get hair from dog groomers. My dog sheds like crazy,

[Dr.Lakshit_ahari]

I think try this on India and China as they have large population.

[haveaseatmarj]

Finally implemented, blessings to the mission

[anitaroberts]

What a brilliant idea! Give that girl a medal! 🐱

[VeggieRice]

this is cool n all but *trigger warning* don't watch while eating or if you're about to eat

[AliHSyed]

Save the oceans? Humans really don’t have a good sense for what the world is capable of enduring. We should be honest and ask what we can do to save ourselves.

[mrmustangman]

💇💇‍♂💇‍♀the whole world would need to be bald to soak up all the oil that is spilled in a year.!!!!

[Ass_of_Amalek]

how do hair mats and plastic felt maps compare in what you can do with them when they're full with oil though? I assume that burning in a trash-fired powerplant is a good use for either, and probably the most economical. but given that the plastic mat is itself made from oil, and long hydrocarbons can in principle be split back up into shorter hydrocarbons, perhaps oil-soaked plastic mats could be used to make new petroleum products, whereas hair mats can't (because the protein is basically a really strong contamination for the hydrocarbons that will burn when heated).
furthermore, if the hair wasn't soaked with oil, it could instead be composted (keratin is a good nitrogen fertiliser), and plastic mats can almost certainly be made quite well from recycled plastic (being a less mechanically and aesthetically demanding application), while a lot of principally recyclable plastic today is just being burned or even buried because it's not economical to recycle. and if they are burned, which is likely either way, the plastic mats will probably burn more cleanly and require less complex exhaust filtration (keratin burns real nasty).

I have seen this covered by news media a bunch oftimes, but never an actual accounting of the benefits and potential drawbacks!

[FREDNAJAH]

what kind of coat was she wearing on her way out?