BY ABIGAIL CURTIS
FOR THE BEACON

BELFAST — Snip. Snip. Snip.

With each swish of the scissors at the Lisa Nichols Salon in Belfast, customers are getting more than a haircut. They are helping the environment in a surprising way.

For the last month, Nichols and her team of cosmetologists have been collecting the leftover hair clippings, which now fill two large trash bags, and soon will be sending the hair to a program that recycles it into mats that soak up oil from oil spills.

“The average salon produces one pound of hair clippings a day,” Nichols said. “We always said we wished there was something we could do with all that hair. We just feel like it’s time to care about the environment more than we have in the past — and the hairdressers are doing what we can.”

Nichols said that the project was initially conceived by stylist Phil McCrory, who realized that hair’s often-irritating efficiency at collecting oil could be put to good use. Petroleum oil clings to hair, and a single square foot of hairmat can soak up a quart of oil in one minute.

The hair mat idea now is being spread around the country by the nonprofit organization Matter of Trust, which aims to turn surplus natural or manmade materials to good use.

The organization helped distribute the hair mats to volunteers cleaning up San Francisco Bay Area beaches after the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill. Photos on its Web site show people lugging oil-soaked hairmats away from the bay.
Hair clippings also are collected in reused nylon stockings to make booms that surround, contain and direct oil spills. Later, the oily mats can be used to grow worms and also mushrooms.

“Last year, there were more than 2,600 oil spills around the world,” Nichols said. “One quart of oil can contaminate 1 million gallons of clean water. It seems like this is a full loop with no chemicals all the way around.”

Sam Littlefield is a farmer from Brooks who learned about the salon’s new project as he waited for his haircut.

“I never knew my hair could do that,” Littlefield said. “I think it’s a pretty good idea. You’ve got to make improvements when you can, and it’s surprising where you can make improvements for the environment.”

Nichols learned about the Matter of Trust salon project from her wholesale distributor, Ronnie White of C.B. Sullivan. White thinks that the Belfast salon is the first in the area to collect hair for the hair mats.

“Everybody’s going green now,” White said. “We’re trying to get the salons an awareness of what they can do to go green.”

For more information, visit the Web site www.matteroftrust.org.