Pet Tube: Hair from Denville salon to help oil spill in the Gulf

Pet Tube: Hair from Denville salon to help oil spill in the Gulf

Pet Tube: Kathy Clark got a haircut Friday that could help contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The salon she goes to, Fusion Spa and Salon in Denville, is donating hair clippings to be used to control the spread of oil.

Fusion is one of thousands of salons and petgroomers answering a call for human hair and pet fur to be used in "booms" — tube-shaped contraptions that control the spread of oil. Just as natural oil clings to hair, so does crude.

The donated hair is stuffed into nylon stockings to act as booms, which sponge up oil. The Hair For Oil Spills program is run by Matter of Trust, a San Francisco-based environmental charity. The organization said it has received more than 450,000 pounds of hair from all 50 states, Canada, Spain, Australia, France and England.

For salons, it's a simple matter of sweeping up the clippings, which they do anyway, and then packaging them instead of throwing them out.

"I think it's a great idea," said Clark, a township resident. "It's not even a difficult thing to do."

She said the program could even inspire her third-grade daughter, who likes having longer hair, to get a trim.

"They're talking about this (oil spill) incident in their school. They're very concerned about it," Clark said.

Millions of gallons of crude have been spewing from the ocean floor south of Louisiana, ever since an oil rig explosion there killed 11 people about two weeks ago. An estimated 200,000 gallons a day have been spewing ever since in the nation's biggest oil spill since the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.Kathy Clark got a haircut Friday that could help contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.