So far, the hair that has been cut off has always been disposed of in the Goldach hairdressing salon.
But now they are benefiting an environmental project.
Hallbergmoos
– When master hairdresser Beate Wagner cuts her customers' hair, the ladies usually leave a lot behind: piles of hair.
Until recently, she swept her hair up in her Goldach salon and disposed of it in the garbage.
That is now in the past: the seas, lakes and rivers are now being cleaned and saved with the remains.
Hair Help the Oceans is the name of the sustainable project that the master hairdresser and her colleague Julia Bernhard have joined.
Hair has the special property of absorbing a lot of fat and it does not lose this function even after being cut off.
Therefore, they are ideal as a natural cleaning agent.
The French association “Coiffeure Justes” was the first to take up this fact: members filled nylon stockings with hair in order to use their filter function to clean water.
(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)
In Germany, master hairdresser Emidio Gaudioso from Bückeburg in Lower Saxony and management consultant Thomas Keitel from Würzburg took up the idea and founded "Hair Help the Oceans".
The hair filter hoses can absorb contamination with oil, petrol and suntan lotion residues from seas, rivers and lakes.
They are then cleaned and reused.
One kilogram of hair can filter up to eight kilograms of (motor) oil from the water.
In the summer of 2019, such hair filters were used off Mauritius, for example, when a freighter ran aground there and thousands of tons of oil ran into the Indian Ocean.
“A customer drew our attention to the project.
We found out more and were immediately convinced of this great idea,” reports Beate Wagner.
"You avoid a lot of waste and do something good for the environment at the same time." That's why hair leftovers in the hairdressing salon Beate no longer end up in the garbage, but are carefully packed in paper bags and boxes.
For a small monthly fee, Hair Help the Oceans collects the hair and organizes further processing.
Beate Wagner and Julia Bernhard hope that many hairdressers will follow suit.
Eva Austria
Good to know
Anyone wishing to participate can find all the information online at www.hair-help-the-oceans.com.
You can find more current news from the district of Freising at Merkur.de/Freising.