Beacon photo by Pat Ratliff
Michelle Micado (R) and her staff at Ombu Salon + Spa are collecting hair to be used to collect oil from oil spills.


Michelle Machado is hoping to help keep oil out of the water and off the beaches from the gulf oil spill.

She hopes to do it from her business, Ombu Salon + Spa in downtown Edmonds. And she’s hoping other spas will help.

Machado is supporting Matter of Trust, which facilitates collecting hair for oil spills programs.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to help the environment through collecting hair,” Machado said.

“Hair is one of the most absorbent materials out there,” said a Texas stylist on CBS News. “That’s why we have to wash it so often.”

And Machado has a good supply of it coming into her salon.

Some of it doesn’t leave with the customer. And that’s a perfect opportunity for Machado and her staff to collect it and send it to Matter of Trust to be made into oil collection booms.

If that sounds like some strange, off-the-wall project that would never work, consider this: In San Francisco, human hair demonstrated its effectiveness for an oil spill cleanup in 2007 when a ship ran into the Bay Bridge and started leaking oil.

When 58,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled from the container ship Cosco Busan, volunteers headed to the beaches armed with mats made out of human hair.

The hair mats that soaked up the sticky globs came from Matter of Trust. The mats are EPA approved.

Your next thought is probably, “How could they get enough hair to do any good?”

There are more than 370,000 hair salons in the U.S., each of which usually cut an average of one pound of hair per day. If all those salons could be persuaded to collect the hair, that’s a lot of potential absorbent oil booms to soak up leaking oil.

Pet hair can also be used, so the collection of lots of hair for ecological cleanup is definitely a possibility. The mats are also used in cages for oiled birds and mammals.

Matter of Trust currently has 19 donated warehouses spread along Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida that are receiving hair from donors all over the U.S., Canada and beyond.

Salons collect the hair (preferably shampooed), put it in a plastic bag-lined cardboard box, and ship it to a Matter of Trust collection depot in California, which is provided by St. Vincent de Paul.

Salons pay for shipping, but have access to the Excess Access database, which catalogs the postage receipts for the recycled hair donations.

Machado hopes other salons can get involved in the project, too, as well as pet groomers, schools and other groups that want to contribute.

How do you get involved? Go to www.matter oftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.

Or stop by Ombu salon + Spa and get that summer “do”. You’ll look better and feel great helping the cause.