Get a Haircut, Save a Beach

A 234th BIRTHDAY WISH FOR THE USA:

Dear GtB Comrades,

It’s time to cut your hair and hit the beach!

If neither of the above is possible for you, we also recommend forfeiting your next haircut and donating what it would've cost you to Matter of Trust – a dedicated and hardworking Gulf of Mexico Catastrophe volunteer clean-up crew. They are deploying natural booms (made out of human hair and pantyhose) that can effectively clean up the areas damaged.

According to Riki Ott PhD, Marine Toxicologist, Author and Exxon Valdez Oil Spill expert:

"The oil industry's approach is to use oil based synthetic products to respond to oil spills. After use, this results in mountains of contaminated material that need to be landfilled or incinerated. This creates a secondary pollution problem.

At least with hair booms and hair mats, natural material is used that breaks down faster and releases less toxins when incinerated or landfilled. They even have a chance at being composted with bacteria.

To suggest that any possible shedding of natural fibers into the gulf are a problem, pales in comparison to methods using hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic industrial solvents.

The benefits of removing oil waste with natural fibers largely outweighs the minimal immediate risk to the environment. Also they reduce the secondary pollution concerns that come with using oil based products, such as only synthetic boom and dispersants." (May 2010)

At present Matter of Trust has enough natural fibers to make 25 miles of boom. 10 miles have already been made by over 600 volunteers. They do need more volunteers and funding for outer mesh.

Check out the demo video here to see the magic unfold before your eyes ….

How amazing are those hair booms?! Makes you wonder why those synthetic products were ever invented...

But back to the bright side. (Yes, there is MORE!) Another eco-inventive solution to the problem in the Gulf of Mexico is “Toxy-Trap”, an environmentally friendly soil remediation technique that can eat and neutralize toxic waste.

It’s people and project creators like this that put the A into the USA (= the US of Awesomeness).

So as we celebrate this 4th of July holiday along with our inalienable US-given rights, we'd like to wish you and all the marine life (seagulls, fish, turtles, crabs, algae, etc…) and victims that have been killed, displaced, facing potential extinction, and are just barely surviving right now – the very best in doing everything within your power, on a daily basis, not to damage the environment.

In closing:

Good luck, USA! Happy Independence Day!!!

Wishing you all liberated ears of organic corn, joyous hot tofu dogs, bountiful aerial orchestras of fireworks, and many, many, many, more hair booms and Toxy-Traps。。。