“Local Salon Owner Connects Minnesota to Florida Gulf Oil Crisis”
(VENICE, FL.) -- As oil slick spreads in the Gulf of Mexico, communities worldwide have started showing support for one organization that is all ready to clean up the Gulf Coast with a free, low-tech solution: Boom made of recycled hosiery and hair clippings.
Matter of Trust, an environmental non-profit, has helped clean up oil spills in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond since 1998 by reusing donated hair clippings from hair salons, barber shops, pet groomers, and wool farmers. Stuffing this donated hair into donated nylon stockings, this organization creates highly absorbent booms to contain oil spills.
Matter of Trust is currently coordinating efforts of thousands of participants to match nylon and hair donations to space in temporary warehousing along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. Volunteers are building booms on site hoping to hold off the encroaching oil slick. Through its donor database matching system program called Excess Access, Matter of Trust is notifying salons and groomers... of where exactly to send their boxes to high-priority sites.
The organization is already receiving donations from all 50 states and several other countries.
Donations include hundreds of thousands of pounds of hair, and many washed nylon pantyhose stockings, which they'll accept even with small runs or tears.
Gulf Coast cities are heralding volunteers that are hosting "Bar B Q parties," or "Boom B Q's as they're calling them, to assemble booms in their own backyards. Lorri Weisen, owner of Hairs to You Salon & Boutique in Roseville has a home by the Florida Gulf and flew down on Tuesday to be part of the clean up effort. “I’m in Wave-1 and my garage is being used for hair storage. The hair is being shipped from all over the country. Matter of Trust has warehouses and storage spaces strategically placed from New Orleans to Sanibel Island, so if, and when, the oil gets to shore, we’ll be ready for it”. Weisen has her salon accepting hair and pantyhose donations and is trying to get the word out to other salons via her blog, facebook and twitter accounts.
Hair soaks up oil like a sponge, leaving water behind and currently over 300,000 salons nation wide are shipping hair and contributing to the clean up. Weisen says she’s proud to be a member of the most amazing recycling program on the planet.
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