Wasting hair!?

[hairymary]

Hello everyone,

Have recently been thinking about the amount of human hair wasted everyday by being thrown away, clogging drains, etc.
Has anyone ever considered re-using hair clippings for things like compost and fertiliser? That is only one potential use! I want to try and develop a material made from the hair that would normally be trashed (from salons etc)! Let me know what you think?

[lunalocks]

I put hair (mostly from trimming DHs hair) in the compost. I asked one hairdresser about what she did with all the hair she cut, and she said she couldn't put ANY into compost because she couldn't be sure what chemicals were on the hair from perming or coloring. She was one who used organic colorants, but she could not be certain of what was already on her client's hair. Just an FYI.

[Stormynights]

I am a retired hairstylist and we just put it in the trash. I have had people ask me to save it to put in gopher holes, but that is the only thing I know of that it was used for. I heard that it didn't compost that well.

[young&reckless]

Some places except donations and use it to clean up oil spills. They take animal hair too. It might take some googling to find them but they are out there.

[Anje]

I've been known to put sheds out for birds' nests in the spring and summer, but honestly, these days the strands might be long enough to be a hazard!

Matteroftrust.org accepts hair to make mats and booms for absorbing oil, though I think they tend to take salon sweepings and pet groomer collections more than from individuals.

[swearnsue]

I tried composting hair and it didn't break down as fast as the other ingredients so I had these clumps of hair mixed in with nice compost.

[spidermom]

I consider shed hairs on about the same level as shed skin cells: gone and forgotten!

I did save the braid when my son decided to go from long hair to short. I still have that braid, but it's more sentimental than anything else.

[embee]

I have a jar I use as a hair receiver. When it gets full and I have a decent weather day I take it out to the compost with my scissors and I *cut hair*!!! Snip snip snip. It goes right into the pile. I've never found any when I used the compost, but it is, after all, all cut up. :) Figured the minerals would be useful for my garden. Virgin hair.

[lunalocks]

The small snips of hair always disappear into my compost, too. virgin hair.

[Daylilly]

After I do a haircut for my sons or my husband I throw it in the garden.

[gthlvrmx]

Someone made an article on here about using shed hair to make a hair donut for sock buns. Let me see if I can find it...http://web.archive.org/web/20120113135214/http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/vbjournal.php?do=article&articleid=208
Let me know if that link works. I'm assuming you can make a donut out of hair clippings mixed with shed hair but someone would have to try it to find out.

[Mearwynna]

I got a bagof clipping from a hair dresser once and put it around the gradens to keep the deer away (which didn't work) but eventually maggots started growing in the clumps. Very yucky.

[QMacrocarpa]

Someone made an article on here about using shed hair to make a hair donut for sock buns. Let me see if I can find it...http://web.archive.org/web/20120113135214/http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/vbjournal.php?do=article&articleid=208
Let me know if that link works. I'm assuming you can make a donut out of hair clippings mixed with shed hair but someone would have to try it to find out.

I tried that hair donut technique with saved sheds, and it did successfully make a donut, but I didn't find it worked all that well. The donut had no stretch, so it was awkward to put over my ponytail, and I couldn't use it for a rolled sock bun. I ended up composting it. Which is also what I do with ongoing sheds. I stick them in a cloth bag in a bathroom drawer until they build up a bit, then just dump a big wad in the compost bin every so often.

I don't know what it was used for, but I recently saw that hair was collected for some reason during WWI. A German poster about it is the first one in this ebook (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35753) about wartime posters at Project Gutenberg.

[sophiamermaid]

Heeheehee: my mom used to use hair she pulled from her brush as the hair poofing (I'm sure there's a term for that) in her updos/partial updos in the 70s, and she looks AMAZING in all the pictures I've seen!

[RainbowBowser]

In my class about body modification, when discussing hair, some of the things that were done in previous centuries and whatnot involved making jewelry out of hair (as the chain) or burning the hair to use for paintings, or stashed in lockets.
Not gonna lie, as creepy and gross as all that sounds I kinda want to try the paint thing.

[RainbowBowser]

Double post

[Khristopher]

Well I'm saving my sheds to try and make fake bangs... so far I have a little 'squirrel' of hair in a box, it could be a good hair rat (it's that it's name?) for updos if the bang thing doesn't work.

[wrinkledamanda]

I once read that the Native Americans saved their hair to use as a rope to climb to the heavens when they die. I keep my hair in a pretty little box.