Hair Clippings Used To Clean Up Environmental Disasters

By Laurence Scott KNTV/NBC News Channel

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Images of an ecological disaster on our shores will be with us for quite some time but you might not expect this to be part of the solution. Along the row of ritzy restaurants and shops of San Jose's Santana Row is the Atelier Salon, which is donating discarded hair clippings to help make these: mats designed to soak up oil like a sponge.

Atelier Salon owner Karie Bennett says "we have a small garbage can that we're filling up a couple of times a day... and actually hair packs down real well so after about three weeks I manage to pack it into a box, not too big, and then we ship it out."

This is now part of an on-going nationwide project as thousands of salons send their trimmings to San Francisco-based Matter of Trust, an environmental group that gets the mats woven and sent where soaking is needed most.

Matter of Trust founder Lisa Gautier says "you can take these mats, if there's an oil spill in the water, you can wring them out salvage the oil if it's crude, and re-used them up to 100 times, it's really tough."

Karie Bennett says "I don't how many inches it takes to save each bird... but there's a lot of inches we are sending in."

If you're wondering what they did with all the hair before this that's also a good story: the salon would give it to clients who wanted to keep deer out of their rose bushes. The human scent is a deterrent, while other charitable solutions are sent to Locks of Love who help make wigs for children with cancer.

Now, there's just one more question about the mats which kind of look like a rug you could pick up at the mall.

When asked if a person with oily hair can donate, Lisa Gautier says "the mats are boiled in water so they are completely sanitized, so they are clean when they're used."

Matter of Trust tells us that there are around 320,000 hair salons and barber shops in the United States which each sending on average one-pound of hair a day to landfills.

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