I once lingered by a Belgian canal at dusk, watching light glint on ripples, smelling damp concrete and distant diesel. The current looked weary, as if drained of hope.
But just beneath the surface, something remarkable was unfolding: human hair—discarded, overlooked—was quietly doing the work of cleanup, intercepting oil and pollution before it reached the river.
In the hands of an NGO called Dung Dung, hair cuttings are becoming sentinels of water health. This is not science fiction. It is a humble, elegant solution born of circular thinking.
Salons, Scissors, And Civic Purpose
The initiative takes root in ordinary hair salons across Belgium, where clippings once destined for the trash are now collected with purpose. Instead of discarding the hair, salon owners carefully gather and store it for the Hair Recycle project run by the non-profit Dung Dung. In Brussels, one salon manager explained that the decision to participate was driven by a sense of responsibility to prevent waste and support a more sustainable use of cut hair, recognizing its potential beyond being simply thrown away.
Collected hair is then fed into a machine that compacts, presses, and transforms it into dense mats or “hair squares.” These mats can either act as absorbent filters or become bio-composite materials.
The mats are placed in drains or along waterways so that polluted runoff, laden with oil, grease, hydrocarbons, and other contaminants, is soaked up before it ever reaches rivers. In flood events or oil leaks, the mats act like sentinels: catching pollutants at the gate.
According to project data from Dung Dung, a single kilogram of human hair has the capacity to absorb roughly seven to eight litres of oil or hydrocarbons, making it a powerful natural filter. The organization also emphasizes that all of its products are produced within Belgium, ensuring a low carbon footprint and avoiding the environmental cost of importing materials from distant locations.
Beyond Belgium: Echoes In Chile And Beyond
Belgium’s experiment is part of a broader wave of innovation. In Chile, Matter of Trust Chile collects hair (human and pet) and uses it to make “hair booms” for waterways. These tube-shaped devices are filled with hair and placed in rivers, streams, or coasts to trap hydrocarbons, heavy metals, even bacteria.
A single kilogram of hair in the Chilean system can absorb roughly five to nine litres of hydrocarbon pollutants. The booms remain effective for around 50 days and use adhesion to capture contaminants.
Meanwhile, Matter of Trust’s sister initiative Agropelo makes woven mats from hair, which are placed in agricultural fields to reduce evaporation, conserve water, and enrich the soil. In Chile’s arid zones, farmers have seen water use drop by nearly half, and yields rising by over 30 percent thanks to nutrient enrichment from hair nitrogen, sulfur, and organic matter.
In one Chilean stream near Laguna Verde, four booms and a hair mat collected 15 kg of contaminants in just a month.
These parallel experiments show that hair as a remediation tool is not a quirk—it is a replicable strategy that travels across ecosystems.
How Hair Works: The Absorption Mechanism (The “Fourth Point”)
At the heart of these projects lies a deceptively simple insight: hair is a natural absorbent. It is composed of about 95% keratin, a tough, elastic, water-insoluble protein.
Hair is lipophilic — it “likes” fats and oils — so hydrocarbons bind readily to its surface. The structure of hair means it can draw in oil via capillary forces, adhesion, and molecular attraction. One strand can support up to ten million times its own weight; in mats, this multiplies into powerful absorbent networks.
When placed in drains or waterways, the mats act like living filters: pollutant-laden water passes through, oil clings to hair, and the cleaner water moves onward. Because the mats are organic, they do not themselves become microplastic pollutants. Over time, they can biodegrade or be composted.
Dung Dung also suggests that after use, mats could be reincorporated into cement or composite materials, further closing the loop.
In short: the “fourth point” is this: hair is not just waste—it is a potent functional material in a circular economy that transforms pollution into value, locally and sustainably.
Voices Along The Way
In Belgium, Janssen recalls the first time a hair mat stopped a leak from reaching a stream. “It’s small,” he says, “but it made a difference that day.” The pride is quiet, but real.
Voulkidis, the Brussels salon manager, now sees every haircut as contributing to environmental health. She says the scissors feel different: “I now see every haircut as a chance to help clean the world.”
In Chile, Luisana Gil, a dog groomer, now saves pet fur and hair, contributing to the booms. “It’s impressive how much we can help the environment,” she said.
In southern Chile, Maria Salazar, a farmer in arid Antofagasta, uses hair mulch mats to retain moisture. “The hair mats are a benefit … they maintain humidity and prevent evaporation of the little water we have.”
These voices are modest. They don’t announce revolutions. They speak of small acts, repeated, that ripple outward.
Challenges, Trade-Offs, And Future Paths
This approach is elegant, but not without hurdles. Some of the key challenges include:
Collection Logistics
Gathering strands from many small salons or pet groomers demands coordination, transportation, sorting — and sometimes storage. Some salons may resist fees or find the extra labor burdensome.
Standardization & Treatment
Not all hair is equal. Dyes, chemical treatments, or heavy metals may alter absorption properties. Processing protocols must account for impurities, contaminants, and variability.
Lifetime And Reuse
How many times can a mat be used? Once saturated, can it be cleaned or regenerated? If composted, what is the ideal lifecycle balancing absorption and decomposition?
Performance Limits
For strong pollutants (heavy metals, industrial effluents), hair mats may need augmentation. Hybrid systems combining hair and other absorbents may be necessary in harsh conditions.
Scale And Awareness
Scaling from local drains to river basins means moving from pilot to infrastructure. Public education is needed so people understand that hair, once discarded, is a resource.
Yet the potential is striking. Distributed remediation means resilience. Local manufacture reduces carbon cost and creates local jobs. Circular design means less waste, less import dependence. And the method is altruistic and elegant — converting what we discard into what heals.
Belgium’s modest experiment has inspired analogs in Chile and France. In an era when global solutions often seem remote, hair mats whisper: sometimes change begins with the small, the local, the overlooked.
Invitation To Imagine Our Own Waterways
When you next sit in a salon chair, feel the scissors snip. That lock of hair, once discarded, could become a water cleaner. A strand could lie alongside a drain, intercepting oil before it walks into a river.
This is hope: not flamboyant or hyperbole, but quiet, rooted, human. Curling strands doing the work of purification. Local salons, local ecology, local trust.
Belgium showed us one thread; Chile took it further into drought and agriculture. The mechanism—the “fourth point”—is clear: hair’s absorption and circularity is not trickery. It is grounded in molecular science and practical deployment.
We can ask: how would this work in Bangladesh? Could salons in Dhaka, in Sylhet, in Khulna participate? Could hair mats intercept oil from streets, from micro-plastics, from runoff?
Tell me if you would like a version adapted to Bangladesh, or a proposal you could pitch locally. I’d be happy to transform this story into one for your place.
