Hair apparent

Hair is really good at attracting grease. Have you noticed this phenomenon? It's why you take a shower every day. When an oil tanker crashed in the San Francisco Bay it seemed it could only end as an ecological disaster. However, volunteers came to the rescue — not garbed in capes like any other superhero, but instead bearing mats made of human hair that had been salvaged from hair salons all over the country. The mats attracted the oil, the spill was cleaned up and wildlife managed to survive. Read a bit more about it at Common Ground, which features a story on the founder of Matter of Trust, one of the charities that participated in the clean-up.

"Lisa Gautier, founder and executive director of the non-profit Matter of Trust (.org), has spent more than a decade utilizing 'surplus materials' — both natural and man-made — through innovative, practical and even profitable means. Matter of Trust bravely embraces such icky leftovers as used vegetable oil, fungus, algae and even human hair, employing them in new ways that frequently mimick the subtle quirks of nature."