In 2024, a Chilean recycling manager deployed discarded salon hair in four booms and one mat in Laguna Verde; about a month later, the devices had reportedly trapped 15 kg of pollutants

In 2024, Mattia Carenini, who serves as the general manager of Matter of Trust Chile, used Petropelo hair booms in a stream located in Laguna Verde, which is a small town adjacent to Valparaíso, a coastal city. The greywater in the area contained oil and heavy metal pollutants from households and other businesses in the vicinity, and it was draining into the sea, thus providing an ideal scenario for testing a process that uses an extensively studied yet under-utilized property of hair, that is, its ability to soak up oil and heavy metals. In one month, as per the statement by Carenini, the booms collected 15 kg of pollutants from the water that flowed through them, according to El País, without independent verification from other sources.Turning salon sweepings into environmental toolsThe Matter of Trust Chile organization works in partnership with hairdressing salons and pet-grooming firms across the country in order to collect hair which, otherwise, would have been disposed of as garbage. This organization runs two main projects based on the use of the above-mentioned natural material, namely Petropelo, tube-shaped booms made of hair netting for trapping oil in lakes, rivers, and ocean waters, and Agropelo, hair mats used on agricultural land to reduce evaporation and save irrigation water. According to the description of the Laguna Verde project provided by Matter of Trust itself, the booms used here were made solely from salon and pet-groomer hair.Why hair works as an oil and metal absorbentThe science behind the technique rests on hair's composition. Human and animal hair is naturally oleophilic, meaning it attracts oil and hydrocarbons while resisting water absorption, which gives it a high capacity to remove pollutants from water without becoming waterlogged itself. The mesh booms installed at Laguna Verde were left in place for about a month, giving the hair enough time to absorb oil and heavy metals through direct contact with the greywater.A method already proven around the worldThis idea has already been tested in other cases. According to El País, in its description of the project, hair booms have been applied to solve the issue of oil spills throughout the world, such as the MV Wakashio oil spill, which occurred in 2020 due to the grounding of the ship off the shore of Mauritius, which is one of the notable cases where hair booms were applied. Matter of Trust, the U.S.-based nonprofit that launched the Chilean chapter, has worked on hair booms for many years.Part of what makes the Laguna Verde project notable is where the raw material comes from. As Luisiana Gil, a pet groomer from Santiago, put it, she was regularly throwing out bins full of her customers’ dog hair with nothing to do with them other than to throw them out at the dumpsite. The connection between the hair thrown out and the booms created by Matter of Trust Chile meant giving the useless hair a second life as an instrument of cleaning polluted water. Carenini has talked about their larger aim in the same incremental way, saying that the organization is restoring the site step by step.Scaling beyond a single streamThe organization believes that the amount of hair obtained from one person can be used to clean thousands of liters of water through the use of booms, which highlights the wastage of such absorbent materials in the form of hair that is considered worthless in many salons. Matter of Trust Chile, established in June 2020, is a nonprofit organization that has been identified by the Chilean government as an Institution of Public Interest. It continues to expand its network of partner salons. According to the organization's own site, its mission is to support farmers, fishers, and coastal communities in keeping water clean while regenerating soil.What the Laguna Verde result suggests going forwardBut while a 15-kilogram performance figure based only on one month’s effort at one location does not prove that hair booms can combat industrial-scale pollution, it does indicate that it is possible to see an effect from using a low-cost material made entirely out of waste produced in another industry. Whether the technique can scale up for larger or more polluted locations is still an open question and will probably depend upon the number of Chilean beauty and grooming salons that choose to donate their waste to Matter of Trust.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.