From Alaskan Sportsman’s Bear Trail Lodge

Nice video guys!

Matter of Trust and their ‘hairmats’ soak and retain oil in spills such as the gulf coast. I’m waiting on more facts on substance, and an interview on how this might effect the Florida coast in the coming days. I’ll update soon.

I call on all hair salons, barbers, and pet grooming companies to participate. Let’s give them more hair than they can handle!!! Please help me share this message so we can do everything possible to help this unavoidable disaster.

From the Matter of Trust website:

Matter of Trust is collaborating with thousands of salons throughout the US and abroad, that donate their hair clippings to soak up oil spills. Last year over 2,600 oil spills occurred in the world. They weren’t all are high profile, but most had an impact on the environment. Phil McCrory, a hair stylist from Alabama, first discovered how hair can help. He was watching CNN coverage on the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. He noticed the fur on the Alaskan otters completely soaked with oil. He began testing how much oil he could collect with the hair clipping from his salon. Phil then invented the hairmat which has other uses as well. Hair also provides a slow protein release which is excellent for flower growers. For more information on hair as a natural fertilizer, please see Phil and our friends at SmartGrow. The US has over 300,000 hair salons and each cuts an average of a pound of hair per day. Salons generously pay out of pocket for postage to send their swept up hair clippings to our donated warehouse spaces. We do the fundraising for this program and outreach through placing our posters in participating salons and with the help of the press.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR HAIR / FUR / NYLON DONORS

FIRST, please sign up with our donor database program www.ExcessAccess.org

- Sign up is FREE & FAST

This way you have access to information on:
- an emergency oil spill near your area requesting hair
- a large scale emergency oil spill that needs wide scale donations
- our storage warehouse
- all warehouse mailing address changes
- Everyone can sign up. Salons, groomers, individuals… Everyone!
SIGN UP HERE

- NEXT, set aside a designated box (salons usually reuse a box in which shampoo was delivered)

- line the box with a plastic garbage bag so hair/fur can’t slip out

- ideally, donate shampoed hair (but certainly don’t include filthy hair / fur)

- any length is fine

- every type of hair is fine (straight, curly, all colors, dyed, permed, straightened…) but only HEAD hair, please!

- every type of fur / waste wool is fine

- sweep in all clippings, JUST HAIR, but please NO OTHER GARBAGE (gum, metal clips, paper cups, wrappers…)

- remember volunteers (sometimes young students) have to stuff this hair into booms and don’t want to feel garbage or anything sharp

- tie the top of the bag and tape the box shut

- we also accept washed, used (even with runs) nylon stocking donations in a separate bag, please.

- we also accept other “natural fibers” horse hair, feathers… again, please, no other garbage or contaminants in with the hair/fur/ wool fibers…

- mark the boxes DEBRIS FREE HAIR / FUR or NYLONS

- mail boxes in to the address below:

Mailing address for hair clippings and nylon donations:

WE ARE CURRENTLY SENDING ALL DONATIONS TO THE GULF SPILL. ONCE YOU ARE ON EXCESS ACCESS YOU WILL RECEIVE ADDRESSES WHERE BOOMS ARE BEING MADE – FOLLOWING THE MOVEMENT OF THE CURRENTS CARRYING THE OIL.

ONE TIME HAIR DONORS – How YOU Can Participate:

Individuals: Please tell your hair stylist / barber about our program and website. We love personal hair donations, but for practical reasons, hair in bulk from salons saves processing time.

Teachers and classrooms: We love getting hair from schools! Please collect and mail all the hair in one bag, rather than lots of little envelopes, saves processing time. Also, you may want to check out our Teacher’s Demo Page

Pet owners: Fur, horse hair and wool is fine. Fur is curly which helps more in making mats. It does seem that human hair has less natural oil and is more efficient in soaking up oil. So, we are finding the sweet spot of ratio fur to hair! Pet hair doesn’t have to be shampooed – but we ask that it not be filthy, please.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE HAIR NEXT?

Loose hair can be stuffed into nylon stockings which we double up and tie together to make “booms” that surround and contain as well as soak up oil spills. See our youtube

We also sort through boxes of hair to make sure there is no garbage and then pay to send it off to nonwoven needlepunch factories to make batches of hairmats. These mats are for emergency oil spills and for oiled bird and mammal cages.

We are fundraising for mat production and for our own permanent warehouse here in California to make hair booms. We also believe that collection kiosks at US harbors will provide green jobs and booms for emergencies. We aim to create a green job program with pathway out of poverty for those transitioning out of foster care (at risk youth 18-22 years old). To help please check out our contribute page.

Flyers for outreach : Please feel free to download and print our flyers. We made them just for you!

Hair Mat Oil Spill Flyer

Student Handout

Teachers Handout

DID YOU KNOW? OIL SPILL FACTS

I arrived at the hotel and began my preparing for my presentation of Red Gold that evening. This was a last-minute gig, but was pleasantly surprised with about 20 people filled the room to watch the film and ask questions. Pat and Carol Oglesby gave me a warm welcome and introduced me to the crowd. After the movie, the attendees were very impressed with Felt Soul’s work and had so many questions (most of which I could luckily answer).

As my buddy Geoff from Ross Reels and I woke from a night of gorilla marketing, I found even more people pulling me aside to ask questions about the proposed pebble mine in SW Alaska. The genuine interest and concern was absolutely great!

The Western Colorado Fly-Fishing Expo is in it’s 12th year. This year focused primarily on introducing kids to the sport of angling and hosted fly-tiers from all over. It was awesome to see the turnout and just how many kids were interested in learning how to cast and tie flies. The next generation of our sport, right in front of my eyes.

While the show went great, Geoff and I decided to depart mid-afternoon and head for Glenwood Springs to prepare for a day on the Frying Pan and Roaring Fork rivers. We grabbed a small room, and then headed for a local showing of the Fly Fishing Film Tour hosted by Nick Clement of Reel Escape Films. The showing was not as large or rowdy as the Denver one, but it was great to meet Nick and other local anglers (not to mention watching some more fish-porn).

Geoff and I woke the next morning, grabbed some coffee and headed up the canyon to fish the Pan. The ‘Toilet-Bowl’, as they call it, was full of feeding bows, but they didn’t like my flies. Geoff landed a few, but it was tough going and disappointing because of all the fish we could see. Nevertheless, we headed down river, found a little spot with no anglers and just started absolutely killing the river on tiny zebra midges. Every other cast had one hooked, and we landed most. Small fish, but plenty of them!

Our last stop of the day was the Fork outside of Basalt. The flows had jumped from early morning when we passed, but we threw on some stones and went for some bigger fish. I only landed one more, but it was a nice brown holding just below a run in slow water. Geoff landed a nice whitefish in the fast water, but by that time we were beat and called it a day. Parting to opposite sides of the state, we drove off from the rivers and back to the working life that awaited.