Recycling Dog and Cat Hair: Giving Them a Second Life in Textiles and Pharmaceuticals

Nathalie, groomer, picks them up by the handful. Normally, these hairs land in the trash. But recently, she puts them aside. For Olivia Cayre, committed to the animal cause, this daughter of a veterinarian has decided to recycle them and give them an unsuspected second life. She has already collected a ton of hair from around fifteen grooming salons and veterinary clinics in the Paris region. This is only a drop of water, because each year on average, in our country, 7,000 tons are thrown away while the hair of dogs and cats makes it possible to insulate houses. Olivia treats these materials using a technique already used by beekeepers to disinfect their hives. Once cleaned, the hairs are sent to a spinning factory in Lorraine to be transformed into textiles. Surprisingly, again, in a laboratory in Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle), researchers usually work on flax or hemp. But recently, the hairs of cats and dogs are at the center of their experience. The objective is to extract a precious material, keratin, highly prized by the pharmaceutical industry. The market is very promising, because France has 22 million pet dogs and cats. TF1 | Report H. Despatureaux, JY Mey