Photo: Nations Online.
Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela (upper left) is subject to oil spills that thousands of volunteers have agreed to treat with their hair.
We all know that to solve big problems we need to get to root causes. But what to do in the meantime? A woman in Venezuela had an idea about a temporary fix for a lake’s constant oil leaks.
At the Washington Post, María Luisa Paúl writes, “For years, Selene Estrach has seen how Venezuela’s crumbling oil industry has taken a toll on Lake Maracaibo, one of the world’s largest and oldest lakes. Once a symbol of the country’s oil wealth, its waters are now coated with iridescent slicks and swirls of neon green algae blooms that can be seen from space.
“The pollution is the product of decaying machinery and ruptures in a network of nearly 16,000 miles of underwater pipelines. Though oil slicks are common in Lake Maracaibo, which contains one of one of the planet’s largest known oil and gas reserves, experts and environmental groups have warned that years of mismanagement and a crippled oil industry have left a constant stream of crude oil oozing into the water.
“Yet little has been done to clean up the lake, which is home to endangered species such as pink river dolphins and manatees. In recent years, officials have downplayed the pollution as ‘a visual matter‘ or ‘not a big deal.’
“That’s why Estrach, a 28-year-old environmental activist, was determined to find a way to help. She founded Proyecto Sirena, a national network of activists dedicated to saving the lake using an unorthodox, yet bountiful, material.
“Hair.
“She got the idea in July while scouring the internet for easy, cost-effective and sustainable solutions for the pollution marring Lake Maracaibo. She saw that Matter of Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, had used human locks 22 years ago to help soak up a spill off the coast of the Galápagos Islands. …
“Estrach told the Washington Post. ‘I thought, “If they’re doing this in … other parts of the world, why can’t we do it in Venezuela?” It’s easy and cheap. Plus, all the hair that’s left over in the salons is going to waste. Why not put it to good use?’
“Since founding Proyecto Sirena — a play on the Spanish words for mermaid and emergency siren, Estrach said her car is constantly filled with bags of donated human and pet hair. Across Venezuela, more volunteers are holding haircut drives that have brought in thousands of people.
“In 1989, Philip McCrory, a hairstylist in Alabama, first designed a hair-filled net to be used after oil spills, which NASA later tested and found effective. Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney found in 2018 that hair is ‘significantly better at absorbing oil than other materials, including cellulose and cotton. …
“Hair was not only used in Ecuador in 2001, but to clean the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in California, the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and, most recently, in this year’s spill in the Philippines.
“Estrach has spent weeks huddled inside a lab at the University of Zulia, where she is a student, trying to replicate how the Matter of Trust nonprofit used hair after past oil spills. The results are promising, she said, with her tests indicating that about two pounds of hair can soak up between 11 and 17 pounds of oil. …
“Estrach’s team is also researching ways to safely discard the oil the devices soak up so they can be reused. ‘It will be our contribution to a growing field of research about this technique,’ she said.
“The first step, however, was getting the hair to make the items. Estrach turned to salons for help. … By October, 600 had signed up to help, which will allow her to collect about seven tons of hair every three months.
“Michele Giurdanella, 46, the CEO of Salvador Hairdressing … ended a 20-year hiatus of not cutting hair to personally help out during a donation drive. Next month, he and about 30 other stylists will give free cuts at Salvador Hairdressing’s headquarters. All the locks from the event will go toward the lake cleanup. …
“Giurdanella said, ‘[The drive] also helps out with our low-income community members who might otherwise not be able to afford getting a haircut. Everyone wins with this.’
“The effort has expanded well beyond Maracaibo. In Caracas, students from the Central University of Venezuela organized another haircut drive this month. They expected 200 people — nearly 1,500 showed up, said Rafael Chavero, a 26-year-old medical student and social activist.
“ ‘We had to promise some that we’d do another drive because we just didn’t have enough volunteer stylists to keep up with the demand,’ he said.
“That day, Chavero said people traveled up to an hour ‘to literally just give us a baggie of hair they collected.’ Others even brought their dogs for a shave and donated the fur.”
When in doubt about the state of humanity, remember that.
More at the Post, here. No firewall at Hindustan Times, here.
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