Hair helps clean oil spill

A hair salon in Newport Beach is helping to clean up the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, one haircut at a time.

All of the clippings that stylists sweep from the floor at Hair West Salon, 2817 Villa Way, in Cannery Village, are shipped to a nonprofit group that uses the hair to make sausage-shaped booms and square pads that sop up oil from industrial spills.

Oil clings to human and animal hair because of their porous texture, but the oil is not absorbed. This makes hair an ideal material to clean up oil spills.

“It’s nice to be at the forefront of a new movement that is doing something to help,” said Hair West stylist Denise Empey, who has worked at the salon for 10 years. “Clients love to hear their hair is going to clean up the environment.”

The San Francisco-based nonprofit to which Hair West donates the clippings, Matter of Trust, is in the midst of a nationwide drive to collect hair from dog groomers and beauty salons to help cleanup efforts on the Gulf Coast.

Matter of Trust has already collected more than 400,000 pounds of hair to help assist with the cleanup.

A massive explosion aboard the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 21 triggered an underwater leak that has been spewing about 200,000 gallons of crude a day for the last two weeks.

Hair West owner Shelly Dale-McCalmont just shipped six garbage bags full of hair from her salon she had been saving in her garage to a warehouse in Florida after she heard about the oil spill. In Florida, volunteers will stuff the donated hair into pantyhose to make absorbent booms that can be used to clean up oil. The clippings will also form square mats — essentially giant paper towels made out of hair.

Dale-McCalmont has been donating clippings from the salon to Matter of Trust for the past two years.

But once she heard about the disaster in the Gulf, she hurried to the Post Office to ship off several months’ worth of hair.

She wants to get the word out to other local hair salons about Matter of Trust’s oil cleanup program, so they can join in the effort.

“I think that it’s a great way for stylists to give back and to recycle,” she said.

How To Help

For more information on how to donate hair clippings to Matter of Trust, visit www.matteroftrust.org. To learn more on Hair West Salon’s hair donation program, call the salon at (949) 673-6832