CLEANING UP AN OIL SPILL WITH MUSHROOMS

[grassfed]

The recent Cosco Busan oil spill in the San Francisco Bay may have just met its match in an eco-cleaning solution that uses human hair and mushrooms! A group of intrepid volunteers has embarked on a project to clean up oil at San Francisco’s beaches using an unusual, yet totally organic, method of waste removal: hair mats and mushrooms. Using mats made of hair, the volunteers are able to absorb slicks of oil on the shore that have washed up since the Cosco Busan cargo ship sideswiped the base of the Bay Bridge last week, spilling 58,000 gallons of oil.

Hair naturally absorbs oil from air and water and acts as the perfect sponge for an oil slick, according to Lisa Gautier of San Francisco, who donated 1,000 hair mats to volunteers. The spongy hair mats, apparently, feel like an S.O.S pad and are about the size of a doormat. Once the mats are soaked with the oily black gunk, oyster mushrooms will be placed on the mats and will grow and absorb the oil. The mushrooms will take approximately 12 weeks to absorb all of the oil, converting the oily hair mats into nontoxic compost. A national mushroom expert named Paul Stamets donated $10,000 worth of oyster mushrooms to the clean-up effort when he heard of the project and Lisa Gautier’s work.

If you are wondering why Lisa Gautier happened to have 1,000 human hair mats lying around, here’s why: The woman runs a nonprofit called Matter of Trust, which matches donations from businesses with needy nonprofits. For a previous project, Gautier had collected human hair from Bay Area hair salons and turned them into hair mats for the San Francisco Department of the Environment to use to absorb motor oil.

Cleaning up an Oil Spill with Hair and Mushrooms

[msongs]

1. sounds good since oil is a 100% natural product anyhow nt

[Peace Patriot]

2. I heard that this project was turned down by somebody--the gov't? BP?

Any further word on that?

Sounds too sensible for "government work," if you know what I mean--and far, far too sensible for "corporate work." Somebody's got to profit from the clean-up, don't you know? Some BIG corporation with BIG machines. Little people with little organic, non-profit ideas that can truly change the world DON'T COUNT.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. More on that, here:

Engineers will not use hair to soak Gulf oil spill


COVINGTON, La. -- Engineers will not use booms made out of hair to soak up the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Barbers have collected hair in hopes that it could contain the ooze as it invades deeper into coastal marshland. But crews said Saturday they concluded using the hair was not feasible, and the organizations collecting the hair were asked to stop doing so.

Engineers said a test conducted in February during an oil spill in Texas showed that commercial boom absorbed more oil and less water than hair boom.

Charlie Henry of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said booms made from hair became water-logged and sank within a short period of time.

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/engineers_will_not_use_hair_to.html