Shear Art Salon & Spa hair stylist Jennifer Wiggins of Temple Terrace cuts Carrollwood resident Myloan Huynh’s hair. The salon is donating clippings.
By Drew Harwell
As anyone who has gone days without shampooing knows, nothing grabs onto oil quite like hair.
That might explain why there are boxes of strangers’ hair clippings in Princess Obriot’s garage in Holiday.
A s president of the environmental group Make Mine Bluegreen, she’s leading a call for donations of hair, fur and wool, key components in the cleanup of the Gulf of Me xico oil slick headed for Florida’s shores.
Hair is the perfect oil-fighter: It’s light, spongy, flexible and free, Obriot said. A clump of it can sop up oil, be wrung clean and immediately reused. The best part? It’s pretty easy to find.
“Hair by itself, by nature, is the best,” Obriot said.
More than 40 salons in Pasco and Hernando counties, she said, have committed to donating sheared hair.
Volunteers will stuff clippings into pantyhose to make booms, or press long strands into mats. T he group will join a response team, taking donations including Da wn dish soap, cat litter pans and soft-bristle brushes.
Technically, hair doesn’t “absorb” oil, it “adsorbs” it. Oil clings to the hair’s surface rather than soaking into the strand. The results are the same. A pound of hair can soak up a quart of oil, Obriot said, and a mat of hair can be wrung out and reused many times.
It was an Alabama hairdresser who suggested the idea after the Exxon Valdezran aground in 1989. In 1998, NASA researchers tested a hair-nylon filter in drums of oiled water. In 2006, guards in the Philippines shaved prisoners’ heads to help soak up a spill. A year later, a group called Matter of Trust compressed hair mats for use on oil-slicked rocks after a spill near the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
In Gulfport, groomers at Joy’s Doggery have filled three old shampoo boxes with a mix of Yorkie, poodle and puli fur that looks, co-owner Melanie Huling said, a bit like a calico.
Stylists at the Michael Angelo Hair Studio in Tampa are collecting about a pound of hair a day, said business manager Anthony Bellapigna. Collecting stockings and mesh to create the booms can be harder, he said.
“People ask me, what can I do to help,’” Bellapigna said. “I tell them ‘Go get a haircut.’” Obriot’s supporters, like Girl Scout Troop 10075, span as far as South Florida. Four Scouts circled the cafeteria table of Flamingo Elementar y Schoolin Davie. Western High School senior Layla Souchet, 17, had told them that they would be helping clean up the massive gulf oil slick.
At first, “they were like, ‘Oh, that’s really cool. What can we do?’” Souchet said. That was before she walked in with bags of clippings from a nearby Hair Cuttery. “Then they were like, ‘Why do you have this big bag of hair?’” The girls reluctantly grabbed handfuls of hair to tr y and weave a makeshift mop head, but the strands were too short. What did work, they found,was stuffing the clumped hair into their mothers’ old, holey leggings. After about 10 minutes, the girls had five sets of floating booms.
With a Scouts trip to Sanibel Island planned for this summer and the oil still spreading through the water, the girls figured they’d better pitch in.
“It’s a great way to help, and I get the satisfaction of knowing I just saved a little otter, or something,” Souchet said.
Contributing: Shirl Kennedy and Dan Sullivan
Volunteers stuffed human and dog hair into pantyhose at Princess Obriot’s house Wednesday.
Booms will soak up oil in spill areas. To donate or schedule a pickup, call Obriot at (727) 967-4754 or visit www.
makeminebluegreen. org.
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