Brazilian firm uses hair to help clean up oil spills and pollution
From beauty salons to cleaning up oil spills... Human hair—a massive market in Africa for wigs and weaves—is showing its worth as an eco-friendly barrier. In Brazil, leftover hair is being recycled to soak up oil in polluted bays
Source excerpt
They are filters filled with human hair and placed strategically across the Bom Jesus inlet in Guanabara Bay.
An orange barrier on the water already stops trash from entering the mangroves.
"The idea is the oil that flows here be absorbed by that hair barrier so they are attached to the orange rubbish barrier, which floats, and we use it as support for the Fiotrar barrier," says Ana Beatriz Gonçalves, an environmental engineer who oversees the weekly maintenance of the new barriers.
The Brazilian non governmental organization Fiotrar is leading the project to get the filters in place.
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