Local salon participates in Hair Mat Oil Spill Program
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Colors Edge Salon in Chester is doing their part to help the environment with their participation in the Hair Mat Oil Spill Program.
The salon began participating in the program in March. The program is run by Matter of Trust, an ecological public charity. The organization is helping to revolutionize and green oil spill cleanup through innovative thinking that promotes environmental sustainability. Thousands of salons, pet groomers, and wool farmers (alpaca, llama, sheep, goat...) are donating waste fibers to Matter of Trust so that they can be made into oil spill clean up mats and containment booms to help keep our water ways clean.
There are over 300,000 salons in the US alone (although we receive hair from many generous international stylists as well). Each salon sweeps up a pound of hair clippings a day on average.
"One of our stylists heard about the program and mentioned that it would be a good program for us as a salon to participate in," said Colors Edge owner Jenny Lochhead. "We gather hair and prepare it for shipping by placing and sealing it into a plastic box and then we send it off to Matter of Trust. We send out the hair about every 3 weeks. Last week we mailed off 8 pounds of hair."
Lochhead went on to state the salon pays an annual fee to participate in the program.
"This is a community building and extremely pleasant way for the general public to be involved in helping the environment. It's a delightful program!" says Lisa Craig Gautier, Matter of Trust founder.
The hair mat was invented by hair stylist Phil McCrory (see SmartGrow.net). Phil and Lisa have been promoting this natural solution for years. However, word really got out when the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco brought this to the attention of the media just as the green revolution was reaching the tipping point.
To close the loop, once the hair mats are used in clean up we are working with Thomas Azwell and Norman Terry's lab at UC Berkeley to research thermophyllic composting and vermiculture (worms) to breakdown the toxic mess and make fertilizer as an alternative to the conventional incineration of oil spill waste.
Matter Of Trust, established in 1998, is an ecological public charity that links ideas, sparks action and materializes flourishing systems. It concentrates on man-made surplus, natural surplus and eco-education.