Britain's salons contribute to cleaning the sea... with hair!

A group of environmentalists is encouraging hairdressers across Britain to recycle hair for use in cleaning marine oil pollution spots, making compost or generating power.

Indeed, London is at the forefront of hairdressing, but the British capital lags behind in recycling the waste produced by this sector.

In a barber shop in the east of the capital, Frey Taylor, co-founder of Green Salon, is preparing to demonstrate how hair is used to make decontaminating filters.

Taylor pours water into a tank and adds some motor oil to it, then opens a cotton mesh and stuffs it with hair.

Once the roll is complete, he places it on the surface of the contaminated water, and it takes seconds for the water to come back clean.

"The hair naturally absorbs the oil and stores it," the man explains.

Experts explain that a kilogram of hair absorbs up to eight liters of oil, and the idea of ​​using it as filters to remove pollution comes from the United States, and its effectiveness has been proven all over the world in absorbing oil in the sea, as happened with the oil slick caused by the sinking of a Japanese tanker off the coast. The coast of the island of Mauritius in July 2020.

When the Green Salon group was formed last summer, Britain was far behind in recycling, according to Frey, who notes that "the infrastructure to recycle this waste does not exist" in the UK, adding, "We will not wait five or ten years for governments to introduce these systems, but we will do it ourselves."

- Green tax - Green Salon believes that the amount of waste generated by the hairdressing sector in Britain is enough to fill 50 football fields annually, but most of it goes to landfills, including aluminum foil, dye tubes and 99 percent of cut hair.

Chemical waste such as dye, bleaching and softening products is another big problem.

"About 30,000 salons and 100,000 independent hairdressers are currently pouring massive amounts of hydrogen peroxide, ammonia and other products into their sinks," Fry notes.

However, the group urges them to collect these products and send them to a power plant.

At his hair salon in trendy London's Spitalfields, Adam Reed proudly explains to one of his clients his recycling system.

The world-famous stylist says he was "amazed" by what he learned from the Green Salon collection.

He adds, "Thanks to them, I realized that sustainability was absent from hairdressing salons, and that it was easy to include its application in our daily work (...) after we realized the severity of the problem."

“It is very simple, we have different bins for waste, and they are all marked,” he explains. Some are for hair, others for protective supplies, another for metal, and a fourth for paper and plastic.

The salon also recycles the remaining dye products.

Adam Reed charges his customers a green tax of a pound or two, stating that their response to it is "very positive".

Salons pay 120 pounds ($165) to join the Green Salon.

Another green use for hair is fertilizing, as it is rich in nitrogen, making it an ideal supplement for fertilizer.

Green Salon member Ryan Crawford, who owns a salon in Milton Keynes, 80km north of London, has tested this type of fertilizer on vegetables in his garden.

Crawford points out two small cabbage plants, the first of which is surrounded by hair and in good condition, and the second planted without hair looks bit off and looks like a skeleton.

"The hair forms a protective barrier around the base of the planting buds, preventing them from being destroyed by slugs and snails," he explains.

On the other hand, the hair around the plant contributes to preserving moisture, which "constitutes a highly effective nutrient for the agricultural land," as he explains.

In one year, 600 salons in Britain and Ireland joined the group that collected about 500 kilograms of hair, which was used to fight an oil spill in Northern Ireland last May and to clean waterways, and used as fertilizer.

Green Salon also collected 3.5 tons of metallic materials that are being recycled.

It is currently hoping to export the model on a large scale to other countries in Europe.