Hair versus oil

For those paying close attention to the events happening off the coast of Louisiana and Florida, you may have heard that American hair salons are helping with the clean-up efforts. “Hair is very absorbent, it absorbs oil particularly” says Malcolm Norton of Thumpers (1813 Granville Street, 429-4900), who is also the president of the Cosmotology Association of Nova Scotia (126 Chain Lake Drive, 468-6477), a province-wide group with 10,000 members in 2,000 salons and spas. Norton explains that a San Francisco organization called Matter of Trust (matteroftrust.org) is collecting donations of hair---human, pet, whatever---and nylons to create oil booms. Now CANS is getting involved, led by a member in Sydney, Erin Gillespie of Elements Hair Studio. Norton says his members across the province are shipping hair to the CANS office in Bayers Lake, which will be sent to the Matter of Trust warehouses United States in bulk. Right now they’re only taking hair donations from salons and spas, but the general public can encourage their local salons to get involved, or donate nylons.