Did you know that there are commonalities between clothes made of wool and the human hair on top of the human head? In addition to their role in warming the body, they both contain keratin protein fibres, which a startup Dutch company took advantage of to launch a new innovation that contributes to creating a more sustainable environment.
Human Material Loop hopes to revolutionize the fashion industry by turning human hair into fabric. The company has made prototypes of coats and jackets from human hair and hopes to attract more clothing companies to incorporate this innovative alternative material into their own designs.
No to waste
Every minute, salons in the United States and Canada produce 877 pounds of waste, according to CNN, and when hair decomposes without oxygen — like in trash bags buried in landfills — it releases greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
According to Human Materials Loop, 72 million kilograms of human hair waste ends up in European landfills every year, equivalent to seven times the weight of the famous French Eiffel Tower.
Most countries resort to burning this waste, especially in the absence of environmentally friendly alternative solutions that can be disseminated on a large scale.
According to the Dutch company, using hair weave is not much different from knitting a sweater with any other material, as short hair is spun together, turned into continuous threads, and then dyed with pure dyes.
Human Material Loop’s prototype was a jacket with a wool-like texture, and the company has since tested other prototypes, including an outer coat stuffed with hair to provide thermal insulation, which it tried out in extreme conditions during an expedition to Aconcagua, the highest mountain in Argentina.
These designs are not yet available for purchase. The goal is to provide raw materials for designers and other brands to work with, and the company says the price of these innovative materials should be competitive with wool once they reach a larger production volume.
The company imports human hair from beauty salons in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, especially clipped or clipped hair because it does not contain DNA that can identify an individual, and is working to create a documentation chain to trace the source of these materials and their final destination.
A growing industry
Historically, human hair has been used as a textile in many different cultures. In Micronesia, for example, the Kiribati tribe made woven armor made of natural materials such as coconut fibres, shark teeth, palm leaves, and human hair, while in the 13th century, people made what is now known as In the southwestern United States, socks are made by tying hair together.
Higashi Hongan Temple in Japan is one of the largest wooden structures in the world, and after it was destroyed by a fire, ropes made of human hair donated from all over Japan were mixed with hemp fibers and used to rebuild the temple in the 19th century.
But using hair as a textile is not without challenges, explains Sunny Visser, a Dutch materials researcher. “There is still some disapproval of using human hair as a raw material,” Visser said. “We don’t see it as a resource.”
She added that there is a lot of effort required to accept the use of human hair as a raw material in industry, stressing that it is a matter of time before hair begins to be used in various areas of daily life.
2023-11-19 15:53:07
#human #hair #contribute #fight #climate #change #Dutch #company #answers #CNN #Economic
