Hair to Help Fight Gulf Oil Spill

WASHINGTON - Snip, snip, snip! Clippers across the country are chiming in for a good cause

"I think it's great... It's fabulous, they're doing a good job." says TJ Dhillon after a fresh haircut.

Customers at Hair Cuttery, Bubbles and Salon Cielo locations nationwide will be helping to take a whack at that huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Diane Daly is public relations manager for the Ratner Companies , which owns all three brands.

"We have a natural resource here, it's hair! And we have it in abundance, so it was a very easy decision for us to make."

Turns out hair, with its scaly structure, is incredibly oil absorbent. So instead of just throwing it away, clippings will be collected and shipped, courtesy of FedEx, to the gulf region, where it will be stuffed into nylon stockings and turned into booms, or woven into mats.

The San Francisco, California based environmental non-profit, Matter of Trust is coordinating the effort.
It plans to deploy the booms along the gulf coast beaches with the help of local volunteer organizations. It has already assisted in several smaller cleanups using this method.

Even salons of a different sort are pitching in. Petco stores are sending all their grooming fur down south too.

Companies will gather the hair as long as it's needed, and take comfort that their cast-offs can make a bad situation, just a little bit better.

"We're just happy, so happy to know we can help in some way," says Daly. "Imagine that a haircut, a simple thing, a haircut, can make that kind of a difference."

LINK: Ratner Companies