Securing The Future Of Our Planet

Last April’s oil spill was estimated to have leaked almost two million gallons of oil into our Gulf of Mexico. This incident that hit so close to home deeply polluted the Gulf, devastating the livelihoods of thousands and endangering the local wildlife.

Although the media may have moved on, the Gulf has yet to fully recover and as the one-year mark approaches, we are reminded once again of this awful predicament. However, for Jonathan T’s Salon, the tragedy was never out of sight or mind as they remained faithful to the cause of cleaning up Florida’s most valuable asset – its waters.

In 2010, the staff at Jonathan T’s in Palm Beach Gardens saw an opportunity to reach out from their local community and extend a hand to assist in the efforts of cleaning up our Gulf. Through programs such as A Matter of Trust, salon owners nationwide were given a chance to help. These programs and methods created prior to the BP catastrophe proved useful in a number of oil spills, such as in 2007, when 53,000 pounds of oil spilled into the San Francisco Bay after a Korean tanker crashed into the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Oil was quickly sopped using some revolutionary tools that were constructed in part with clipped hair donated by salons nationwide.

According to the inventor of the now well-known hair mat, Phil McCrory, “Hair is very efficient at gathering oil, skin oils off your face, oil pollution out of the air, and water, even petroleum oil spills. Hair is ‘adsorbent’, as in “clings to” unlike ‘absorbent’ which is to ‘soak up.’”

As explained by Yanni Pishos, owner of Jonathan T’s, there are two major methods. In the first method, mats are manufactured using hair trimmings. “Mushrooms can be packed on top of these mats, which soak up the oil, turning it into nontoxic compost,” he said. The second approach is called “hair booms,” in which hair trimmings are placed in large nylons, entered into oily water, and voila – clean water.

To Pishos, any and all hair can be used no matter the length, so clients were excited and honored to assist in the salon’s efforts to clean up the oil spill. However, despite the efforts of these crafty organizations, which attracted massive support, BP and the engineers involved in the cleanup efforts vetoed the idea of using hair mats or booms to clean up the enormous mess that was created.