Recession Cuts Operation That Uses Hair To Clean Up Oil 119
Matter of Trust, a nonprofit that uses human hair scraps to make mats to clean up oil spills, finds itself with 18,000 pounds of hair and nobody to process it. Lisa Gautier, who runs the organization, says that the recession has closed many of the textile makers that produced the mats and the warehouse that stored them. Unfortunately for Lisa the hair keeps piling up. From the article: "Hair is good at soaking up oil because, up close, the strands are shaped like a palm tree with scalelike cuticles. Drops of oil naturally cling inside those cuticles, says Blair Blacker, chief executive of the World Response Group. A pound of hair can pick up one quart of oil in a minute, and it can be wrung out and reused up to 100 times, Mrs. Gautier says."
Why process it? (Score:1, Funny)
Signed,
CmdrTaco
Cherokee Hair... (Score:2, Funny)
Well, you know the rest.
Obvious solution (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like cleaning up the spill... (Score:5, Funny)
could get a little hairy.
Re:18,000 lbs = 4500 gallons every 12.5 days... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:BP? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm trying to imagine this. I doubt there is automated equipment to do it and doing it by hand would be super nasty. I'm guessing that the quart per pound of hair is in ideal circumstances such as the mat being submerged in pure oil. Throwing a mat into the ocean would probably soak up more water than oil and then sink. Then you would have a bunch of dolphins with greasy toupees.
Re:Obvious solution (Score:4, Funny)
I heard all the dead drug dealers in the sea off the coast of Mexico will soak up any oil that goes their way.
Replace the myraid booms with hair socks (Score:3, Funny)
1. Talk to L'eggs - acquire off-style hose (save eggs for next years' Easter Bunny Motherlode)
2. Employ otherwise unoccupied Cajuns - capitalize on their andouille skills
3. Deploy Mega-Links of hair sausages off the coast
4. Retrieve, and press with hydraulic press - reclaim watery crude
5. Repeat.
No profit readily apparent.
Re:Hmmm..... (Score:4, Funny)
Not to mention the day we talked about sarcasm.
Re:Does it have to be human? (Score:4, Funny)
Except then I'd be allergic to the ocean you inconsiderate clod.
Re:EEeesshh (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe I should rephrase my question. What's so gross about using hair to soak up oil?
As an interesting aside, there are things having sex in your eyebrows right this moment.
Re:Hmmm..... (Score:3, Funny)
Someone missed the day when we talked about diversification and risk....
Someone definitely missed something...
Re:Replace the myraid booms with hair socks (Score:3, Funny)
8. get gov't subsidy
9. profit^2
Re:Does it have to be human? (Score:1, Funny)
The thousand and two use for a dead cat.
Jersey Shore, South. (Score:2, Funny)