You know when you get your hair cut and there’s just a pile of it left on the floor? Did you ever wonder what happens to it? In most cases, it’s just thrown in the trash, but sometimes it’s used for other purposes. Here are some.
10 Uses For Human Hair
1. Wig making. This one is pretty obvious, but it helps thousands of people each year to cope with losing their hair. A human hair wig looks natural and is incredibly durable. Most donated hair goes into wig making.
2. Test tress making. When cosmetic chemists design hair products they need to test them on the real thing. Companies like the De Meo Brothers or International Hair Importers provide tresses, weaves and mannequin heads all made of human hair. And if you were wondering how much hair is worth, 1 oz cost $40.
That’s over $600 a pound!
3. Help people grow food. A company called SmartGrow uses imported human hair from China and India to make a gardening product. The hair is weaved into mats that help protect the plant’s roots from weather and insects.
So, maybe it’s not the cook’s hair in your salad.
4. Clean-up Oil Spills. Some years ago NASA was testing a technique to use human hair to clean up ocean oil spills. No word on whether this made it out of the prototype stage.
They should use my hair for this experiment because it is always oily!
5. Make clothes. Some people have weaved hair into a fabric and made clothes. Style dash recently reported on a dress made this way. And this barber has even made a hair bikini.
While the dress looks good, I’m not sure I want to wear it or the hair bikini.
6. Create furniture. When you spend all day cutting people’s hair you have the strangest ideas. Here is an ex-assistant hairdresser who managed to create a chair out of human hair. The fiber is spun into a material like fiberglass and forged into the shape of a chair.
Great idea but I wonder how long it would last.
7. Craft a work of art. It took 42,000 hair cuts, but artist Wenda Gu was able to create a giant banner using human hair. It was first displayed at Dartmouth College’s Baker-Berry Library.
It’s no Mona Lisa but it is interesting.
8. Making soy sauce. As if you needed another reason to avoid things made in China. Here is a company that used human hair to make soy sauce. Since human hair is rich in protein, they were able to treat it, remove the amino acids, and pass it off as soybean oil.
Wow, I didn’t really want to know that.
9. Nesting material. Birds will use almost anything to make nests and human hair is no exception. This bird watching site even suggests putting out bags of hair clippings to help birds make nests. Here’s someone who uses hair clippings to provide a nest for their pet rat.
It’s nice when people help animals. I just hope they shampooed before cutting.
10. Crafting a rope. Native Americans were known to twist hair fibers together to make strong ropes. Eventually, they used horsehair but there are still people who practice the art.
Not surprising. There are people who collect toenails too.
If you are interested in seeing your hair go somewhere other than a landfill, consider donating it to one of these worthy causes.