Your hair
recycling impact
Hair has been viewed as waste for too long. Our mission at Sustainable Salons is to make hair a resource of the future.
Human hair is organic matter, and most types of organic matter have a TON of uses. Hair is gentle on the planet and more sustainable than you could ever imagine – it just keeps on growing!
What do we accept?
What do we do with all that hair?
Hair booms
Synthetic booms and chemical dispersants cause damaging long term side effects on the environment.
Hair booms however, are an organic alternative that’s even more effective at soaking up oil. A standard boom can soak up to 4L of oil and can even be drained and reused up to two more times. Talk about the power of hair!
How are booms made?
To make a hair boom, a filter stocking is stretched over a piece of pipe, then hair and fur is stuffed into it. Once it’s packed in we simply tie it up then BOOM you’ve got a hair boom!
And there you have it, hair and fur that’s been swept up by our members get a second life.
We’ve done our research
Thanks to our salon members, Sustainable Salons supplied Rebecca Pagnucco (pictured with Sustainable Salons Co-Founder Paul Frasca) with all the recycled hair clippings she could possibly need for her Masters research at the University of Technology Sydney…and it was all worth it! Her final results showed that “not only is hair capable of adsorbing oil at high rates, but hair is also relatively more efficient at adsorbing oil than other materials.”
Research Paper: Comparative efficacy of hair and commercial sorbents used in crude oil remediation (2017)
Rebecca now works as a Principal Policy Officer for the NSW Environmental Protection Agency
Hair booms in action
Kirkalocka Station
In July 2021, an oil tanker on its way to the mines spilt 33,000L of oil into the Kirkalocka creek.
Thanks to the hair collected from all our members, we were able to dispatch 1000 hair booms to help soak it all up!
Mauritius Oil Spill
In July 2020, a ship ran aground on a reef in Mauritius, sparking an ecological disaster.
Sustainable Salons worked with the ground teams in Mauritius to help advise how to deploy hair booms.
Commercial industry, local council projects & government contracts
We provide hair booms to companies to soak up leakages from machines during manufacturing.
We also work with local Sydney councils to supply hair booms for water entrapments.
Hairy tech
At the moment, flexible OLED displays are manufactured using sophisticated synthetic chemistry and heavy metals that are harvested from the earth. This means the devices become toxic pollutants when discarded.
We want to help change that.
Sustainable Salons has partnered with QUT and Griffith University to research how human hair can help create more environmentally sustainable OLED displays at a much lower cost. The research also involved how once processed, recycled hair can help stabilise solar panels so they’re more effective and last longer!
We’ve done our research
Sustainable Salons has been supporting Amandeep Singh Pannu, from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), in his amazing research on how human hair can be used instead of heavy metals in flexible OLED displays and solar panels. Sounds crazy right? Well it’s all possible thanks to hair being 45% carbon. Amandeep and his team developed “high performance, high luminescent carbon dots from the abundantly available biowaste of human hairs.”
Research Paper: Biowaste-Derived, Self-Organized Arrays of High-Performance 2D Carbon Emitters for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (2020)
They created a process where hair is heated to extreme temperatures so only carbon dots are left. Special agents are then added to make them luminescent!
Hair to graphite
Hair is nature’s coolest yet weirdest accessory, and Dr Amandeep Singh Pannu’s research shows that could it power the batteries of the future!
Teaming up with Dr. Amandeep Singh Pannu and his trailblazing crew at Charles Sturt University, we’re rewriting the rules on how hair can power our world. With the majority of graphite typically being imported from China, this sustainable alternative to conventional sources is both eco-friendly, cost-effective and as hairdressers well know, in ample supply!
Soilz Alive
Across Australia & New Zealand more than half a million kilos of hair ends up in landfill each year. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt, it’s that hair being an organic resource deserves a place back on planet earth.
A world-first soil treatment powered by – you guessed it – hair
Hair is a bountiful and nourishing resource, not something to throw away. Soilz Alive saves hair from going to landfill by repurposing it as a natural way to improve soil health.
Unlike compost mixes containing manure, blood, and bone, Soilz Alive is an eco-friendly alternative that helps improve soil health and encourages plant growth.
Hairy brick
Hair clippings collected by Sustainable Salons are being transformed into hairy bricks—a sustainable building material that enhances insulation and reduces environmental impact.
Other materials we recycle
Hair
Tools
Metals
Chemicals
Ponytails
Plastics
Paper
Disposables
Razors
Sharps
