Oil Spill: Donating Pet and Human Hair to Help

If you’ve been keeping tabs on the catastrophic (an adjective I feel like I’ve been having to use far too often lately) Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, you’ve probably been wondering how exactly you can help. Well, for those of you with furry, four-legged flatmates, it can be as easy as sweeping the floors and collecting all that errant fur and hair.

So how exactly can hoarding pet fur help with cleaning up one of the worst environmental disasters in recent memory? Enter Matter of Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that’s been accepting donations of non-filthy pet fur and human hair since 1998 to craft oil-absorbing hairmats — described as “flat square dreadlocks” — and hair-stuffed containment booms made from recycled pantyhose. These hairy contraptions are effective at soaking-up oil and they don’t require any new resources … just stuff you’d normally trash (or compost) unless you’re into, umm, stockpiling fur.

I must say, sending along fur to Matter of Trust via Excess Access is an eco-ideal spring cleaning mission for folks with critters around the house. In addition to pet owners, groomers and salon owners can get involved too by sending in bulk shipments of hair/fur. In fact, as of today, 400,000 pounds of hair was en route to the Gulf Coast.

Head on over to Matter of Trust for instructions on how you, and Mr. Bojangles the beagle, can help out.

Via [Huffington Post]

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
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Joe R.

12:08PM PST on Mar 5, 2012

Great idea.

send a green star

KrassiAWAY B.

9:27AM PDT on Apr 29, 2011

Good idea, petition already signed.

Mary Beth M.

11:11AM PDT on Apr 8, 2011

Wow, you wonder how they thought of this? With 5 pets, we have an abundance of hair...a new use for it!

Dina W.

4:09AM PDT on Apr 2, 2011

awesome

JULIE C.

2:01AM PDT on Nov 6, 2010

GREAT Idea! Cat & Dog hair is in abundance around our house~this give me a more positive outlook on picking it up daily...now I can smile about it & "share it" by donating it to a GREAT cause!

Nicole F.

11:35AM PDT on Oct 9, 2010

What do they do with the hair afterward? I mean...I know a landfill is better than the ocean...but do they do anything special with it or just toss it?

Lora H.

5:57PM PDT on Oct 3, 2010

!!! this is so exciting !!! Thanx so much for this! I'm going to go tell all my friends now.

Jason C.

6:32PM PDT on Aug 11, 2010

i wanna try this!

April D.

6:33PM PDT on Aug 3, 2010

What a fabulous idea. One thing I have plenty of is cat hair!

Monique D.

3:08PM PDT on Jul 26, 2010

Im going to look into this