馃攳
Human Hair Mats Clean Oil Spills. Why Don't Big Companies Use Them? | World Wide Waste - YouTube
Channel: Business Insider
[1]
this machine weaves human hair to make
[3]
mats
[5]
and this non-profit has been using them
[7]
for decades to help clean up oil spills
[10]
i'm going to show how fast it soaks up
[12]
the oil how clear water pours off of it
[15]
and the hair holds the oil
[17]
one kilogram of hair can soak up around
[20]
five times its weight in oil i'm just
[22]
trying to get every nook and cranny here
[25]
i mean this is literally just the hair
[27]
from your head
[29]
but for most cleanups oil companies use
[31]
mats made from petroleum or spray
[34]
chemicals that can make people sick
[37]
so if this method works
[39]
why aren't more oil companies using it
[41]
to clean up their messes maybe the
[43]
weirdness makes it you know
[45]
just more interesting i don't know
[47]
we went to san francisco to see how hair
[50]
mats can clean up worldwide waste
[54]
matter of trust has been making hair
[56]
mats since the year 2000
[59]
founder lisa gautier sources hair from
[61]
salons in over 30 countries
[64]
we have what we call the hair force
[66]
the donated clippings arrive in small
[68]
batches
[69]
people mail this in every day we get i
[71]
don't know roughly 10 or so envelopes a
[74]
day
[75]
we get a lot of blondes as you can
[76]
always tell when we get a package from
[78]
los angeles like right away blah blah
[79]
blah
[80]
a lot of redheads in boston this is
[83]
probably from boston
[85]
we've been told that we got a package of
[88]
underarm hair from michael phelps and
[90]
the olympic swimming team
[93]
the team also uses animal fur
[96]
clippings from alpaca
[98]
buffalo sheep etc llamas
[102]
lisa and her team of felters start by
[104]
cleaning the bags of donations
[107]
a lot of these were swept off the floors
[109]
of hair salons
[110]
pins cigarettes food anything sharp
[114]
anything hard that might break the
[116]
needles all of that is garbage
[119]
i don't find it gross at all i have a
[121]
lot of hair and i it doesn't bother me
[123]
um but and i you know it's part of the
[126]
charm of it
[128]
the felters lay out the human hair on
[130]
this bed of dull nails and start to
[132]
layer it with animal fur and fleece
[135]
we had to learn that we needed to not
[138]
use sharp nails because it would start
[140]
to slice the hair
[141]
and david invented this for us and he
[144]
created it so that this thing just lifts
[146]
up and it's really easy for us to remove
[148]
it afterwards
[149]
we get out make it more neat and faster
[153]
then these machines tighten the fibers
[159]
the final product looks and feels like a
[161]
doormat feel how like sturdy that is
[164]
it's really sturdy
[166]
the idea to use hair to clean oil spills
[169]
started in 1989 with phil mccrory a hair
[173]
stylist from alabama
[175]
he was watching the exxon valdez oil
[178]
spill in williamson alaska
[181]
and on cnn it was showing the otters
[185]
covered in oil and the water around them
[187]
a little bit cleaner
[190]
phil looked down at the oily head of
[191]
hair he was shampooing
[193]
and it just sort of snapped for him you
[195]
shampoo because hair collects oil i cut
[198]
you know a pound of hair every couple of
[201]
days all this could be going to clean up
[203]
oil spills
[204]
so 10 years after phil came up with the
[206]
idea lisa partnered with him to scale up
[210]
at first they stuffed nylon stockings
[212]
with hair to make booms shaped like
[214]
sausage
[216]
we're going to stop doing
[218]
as many booms as we have because they
[220]
needed the nylons which was again
[221]
plastic to hold them together and we're
[224]
going to start doing more mats because
[226]
mats add surface area and so it just
[229]
collects even more oil
[231]
that idea was put to the test in 2010
[234]
during the largest oil spill in american
[236]
history
[238]
bp's deepwater horizon spewed four
[241]
million barrels of oil into the gulf of
[243]
mexico over three months
[246]
and lisa's team got a flood of donations
[250]
we just started to get in ponytails from
[252]
people just you know cutting it off and
[254]
then of course it was spring and it was
[255]
sheering season um and there's turns out
[258]
there's buffalo herds in the united
[260]
states so there was a lot of fleece just
[262]
coming at us and trucks and mail trucks
[264]
and everything it was it was fantastic
[266]
and overwhelming we had 19 warehouses
[269]
about 100 000 square feet each from the
[271]
florida keys all the way to texas right
[273]
on the water because people are just so
[275]
generous
[276]
lisa says that a representative from bp
[278]
reached out to her about a partnership
[281]
insider asked bp about that but the
[283]
company didn't get back to us
[285]
in the end the oil giant didn't deploy
[288]
her hair booms
[289]
noah a governmental organization helped
[292]
run the cleanup effort
[294]
scientists concluded that hair booms
[296]
weren't as effective at removing oil as
[298]
booms made with polypropylene an oil
[300]
derivative
[301]
the booms would get water all to get
[303]
saturated in water become heavier than
[306]
the water and start to sink in the water
[308]
and in whatever oil they had on it sunk
[310]
with it and recovery was very very
[312]
difficult trying to get those back out
[313]
of the environment you don't see that
[315]
with the poly booms these polys do not
[318]
absorb water like our hair does
[321]
bp instead tried to burn the oil off but
[324]
the fires only covered a small
[326]
percentage of the spill
[328]
the company also sprayed dispersants to
[330]
dissolve the oil and push it toward the
[332]
ocean floor
[333]
where much of it remains today
[336]
and those chemicals can make people sick
[339]
but the consensus was that the oil was
[341]
less harmful at the bottom of the ocean
[343]
than washed up on shorelines
[345]
it's a trade-off sometimes they use the
[347]
word net environmental benefit but it's
[349]
not net palace it's net less bad
[353]
still locals along the coast used lisa's
[356]
hair mats to protect their beaches
[359]
the epa told us that our bp response was
[363]
the largest grassroots mobilization they
[365]
had ever seen and i was out there in you
[368]
know mississippi alabama louisiana texas
[371]
and florida
[372]
eventually bp was able to plug the leak
[374]
on its own but matter of trust proved it
[377]
could mobilize thousands of people to
[379]
address an epic catastrophe
[382]
the number of large oil spills has gone
[384]
down in recent years
[386]
but matter of trust is now focused on a
[388]
much more common problem
[390]
motor oil that drips from cars on the
[392]
road and makes its way to the ocean
[395]
there's many ways that oil gets spilled
[398]
and the way that we concentrate on is
[401]
oil that contaminates our waterways is
[404]
actually just drips on the
[407]
i'm mixing with rain water and getting
[408]
into storm drains
[410]
and those drips add up to over 180
[413]
million gallons per year
[416]
that's 16 times the amount spilled by
[418]
the exxon valdez
[420]
another use for the hair mats the us air
[423]
force is experimenting with them to
[424]
manage chemical waste on its bases
[427]
they're doing a very large
[429]
system with
[431]
contaminated water reservoirs
[434]
and once the mats have done their job
[436]
soaking up oil how does matter of trust
[438]
plan to get rid of them it actually can
[440]
break down into compost it takes a
[442]
really long time and it's not our number
[444]
one idea of for the circular economy
[446]
what we think is better is if we have
[449]
really clean incineration
[452]
even as she grows her business lisa
[453]
wants to make sure her hair map process
[455]
remains an open source technology
[458]
phil mccrory had a patent which expired
[461]
and we all decided that it's everybody's
[464]
hair and we're a public charity and we
[468]
thought that it was best not to renew it
[470]
and we just thought it's something that
[471]
should be offered to the world
[473]
she's shipped her machines to more than
[475]
a dozen partners around the world
[477]
we just had a really great meeting a big
[479]
zoom meeting with all of our partners
[481]
around the world and everybody was super
[482]
jazzed because i think we're just
[484]
getting into that next level now where
[485]
we're looking at how to send out more
[487]
and more machines and we have one in
[489]
london one in wales you know france
[492]
switzerland finland
[495]
athens greece tokyo santiago chile
[499]
and she says it's possible to do this
[501]
work from home
[502]
for us
[503]
cottage industry is the future anybody
[506]
can make a little felted experiment just
[508]
by putting a bunch of hair and fur in
[510]
your shoe and walking around in it for a
[511]
while the heat from your heels and the
[513]
sweat and the um and the jostling from
[515]
your shoe you pull it out and you will
[517]
get a little a little matte and you've
[519]
tried this oh yeah
[522]
[Music]
[538]
you
Most Recent Videos:
You can go back to the homepage right here: Homepage