Climate crisis? The baal is in our court

Hair has been the source of much vanity — and trauma. Ask any shampoo model slo-mo-ing a twirl, or a Delilah-duped Samson. Hair loss has given us not just receding-to-receded hairlines, wigs and toupees, but also clogged sinks and returned restaurant dishes. But here’s a hair-raising use of the good stuff put to second-best use west of the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple — where tonsuring is not just an offering to the god but also an excellent tropical style statement. Britain’s Green Salon Collective, a group of smart hairdressers, is channelling the human hair’s greater powers by collecting 500 kg of it cut from heads to replenish the earth as ‘super manure’, generate energy and help clean up oil spills.

Hair is a natural absorbent of oil — a kg soaking up as much as 8 litres. If Newton discovered the law of gravity after being knocked on his head by a falling apple, we assume someone must have been getting a champi at the barber’s when the idea of using hair to make depolluting filters struck. The idea of ‘hair purifiers’ originated in the land of the 1967 ‘countercultural’ (read: hippie) musical Hair — the US. It’s even been used in real oil spills, one involving a Japanese tanker off Mauritius last year. So, can hair save us from climate crisis? Will it really be a case of baal-baal bach gaye? Watch this follicular space.