I recently dyed my hair auburn. I like to think it’s auburn but in actual fact it’s more like copper. I like it nonetheless. It was a brazen transition after my long-established tenure as a blonde, one which has been quite aptly remarked upon by many as an emblem of great change in life. They’re spot on. I think it subconsciously represents my rebirth into singledom after half a decade lost in love. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.
It’s midday on a Thursday, the only time I could get an appointment, and I’m perched on the throne in my east London hair salon where colourist Amelia (or Millie, I feel awkward asking) reapplies my tint. “We only use sustainable hair products here,” she tells me as we dip in and out of conversation as one does at the hairdressers. I don’t know what this means, sustainable hair products, but, as she tackles my dye-induced mattes with a fine tooth comb, I become ever-curious as to the fate of hair.
Aside from buying natural shampoo/conditioner bars and looking out for the textbook problem ingredients – parabens, sulphates, silicones et cetera (there is many a resource online to learn more about this, read up) – in haircare products, I, quite naively, hadn’t thought much about how hair could be useful in rejigging traditional systems to lessen the impact we have on our beloved planet.
Cue, food for thought.
I spoke to Emma Tarlo, anthropologist and author of ‘Entanglement, the Secret Lives of Hair’, who recently co-curated the exhibition ‘Hair: Untold Stories‘ for the Museums and Galleries Network for Exhibition Touring between London’s Horniman Museum, Cumbria’s Tullie House Museum and Garden and Sheffield’s Weston Park Museum. After complimenting me on my hair which made me blush, she introduced me to an organisation called Matter Of Trust. I soon slipped down a rabbit hole.
Whilst some salons participate in programs that accept donated hair to make into wigs (we love), according to Business Waste 99% of hair cuttings end up in landfill. Given that in the UK alone, more than 6.5 million kilograms of hair is ‘produced’ (as such) per year, that’s a fair quantity going to waste.
But, as we come to terms with the Anthropocene and humanity becomes all the more resource savvy, it is increasingly apparent that hair, too, is a useful commodity that could be utilised both as a material in itself as per the work of designers including Sanne Visser, Zsofia Kollar, Alix Bizet and Tina Gorjanc (I’ll let you peruse) and as a tool to curb planetary damage such as oil spills.
Images Courtesy of Alix Bizet Studio.
It’s a given that not all are comfortable with the idea of a Homo-Sapien-hair (like Mohair, hair’larious lol) knitted sweater. Fine, I get it. There’s a stigma surrounding garments made from human waste which much of the work of the aforementioned designers is about breaking down, encouraging us to think outside the box in terms of what is considered to be an acceptable fibre to wear. Hair-based materials are more than just garments, anyway. Keratin, the protein in hair, is so strong that hair can be used to make fully functional ropes amongst other things such as nets that absorb oil.
Conventionally, oil spills are cleaned up using petroleum-based polypropylene products, which Matter Of Trust note seems counterintuitive. They provide a natural, renewable, biodegradable, compostable alternative: hair. As part of a programme called Clean Wave, Matter Of Trust use donated and wasted hair amongst other fibres from the waste stream to manufacture felted and matted products that effectively soak up spilt petrochemical oil in storm drains, wells, filtration systems, rivers and oceans.
Need I even touch on the fact that hair doesn’t require additional resources to grow, it’s just there – and we don’t use it. That being said, groups that recycle hair (and tools used to manage hair) are cropping up all around – from The Hair Recycle Project, Matter of Trust, The Green Salon Collective to Handle and more (again, please peruse).
I guess the takeaway would be something along the lines of: see potential in all that is available to us, including human waste. And, go to a salon who are allied with such organisations and are aware of the uses of hair, post-cut. You could even go full Karen on their asses, getting in touch with management to inspire them to donate wasted hair if they aren’t already.
As the great Fran Lebowitz once said: “You’re only as good as your last haircut.”
Oh and by the way, the sustainable hair products used by the salon that I get my hair done that Amelia/Millie mentioned are from a company called O-Way which offers the carbon neutral delivery of minimally packaged, circularly-produced “agricosmetics” (good word). I’d like to see more in the way of information and evidence regarding the science behind it but in the spirit of optimism, the lightheartedness of this column and the fact that my deadline looms, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt – especially considering they are so anti-greenwashing (see website). It would be of the utmost psychological ingenuity, a new wave of greenwashing altogether and totally possible at that, to utilise anti-greenwashing propaganda to, well, greenwash.
