Brignoles | From a hairdressing salon to the waters of a port in the Var, via a work integration company: instead of ending up in the trash, the hair cut by Thierry Gras is transformed into sausages to help clean up the Mediterranean.
“The hair is lipophilic, that is to say it absorbs fats and hydrocarbons”, explains to AFP the hairdresser at the origin of this initiative from his salon in Saint-Zacharie, in the South. East of France.
Thanks to the absorbent socks filled with wicks, he hopes to fight “against pollution, however small” of the water in the ports.
Used for years during oil spills, this technique is “interesting” because it “recovers waste in decontamination”, notes Naoufel Haddour, lecturer at the École centrale de Lyon who is working on other treatment techniques. of polluted waters.
Each year, a hairdresser produces about 5.5 kilograms (500 liters) of hair, which mostly ends up in the trash, says Gras cutting a client’s colored strands.
As a child, he was marked by the sinking in 1978 of the Amoco Cadiz, during which hair had been used to mop up more than 200,000 tonnes of oil spilled on the Breton coast.
Hence his astonishment when he began his career as a hairdresser to find that no recycling sector existed.
It was at this point that the idea of using the cut wicks to fill socks surrounded by nylon stockings to absorb the oil residues in the ports took shape.
In 2015, he founded the Association des Coiffeurs Justes, a network of 3,300 professionals who send him cut locks.
“We can use them in the event of a serious oil accident, as happened recently in Mauritius, but the idea here is to clean up all micropollutions on a recurring basis,” explains the hairdresser.
Today, in a warehouse in Brignoles, 30 kilometers from its salon, 40 tonnes of hair await the start of large-scale production of antipollution socks, which should start after tests in the port of Cavalaire-sur-Mer.
In paper bags filled with two kilos of hair each: the fruit of hairstylists from Ile-de-France, Brittany and even Germany or Luxembourg.
This hair is then sent to a work integration company a few streets away, where people who are out of work or who have dropped out of school, fill nylon stockings with it.
“Ecological circuit”
A “rewarding” process for employees since it is part of an environmental goal, according to Sophie Jampy, supervisor. In the long term, the sausages could be sold for nine euros, half going to this insertion structure.
For the moment, they are sent to the port of Cavalaire-sur-Mer where a dozen of them have been tested since the beginning of the summer near the gas station, along the quays and the hulls of the boats.
“The water always ends up in the sea, pollution is the same”, notes the mayor of Cavalaire and CEO of the port, Philippe Leonelli, who is delighted to be able to empty the waters of the port of the oil droplets escaping in particular the engines of the 1,100 boats that are housed there.
“The traditional method (of blotters or socks in polymers, Editor’s note) is products that we do not reuse and that we throw away,” he laments. The hair strands are washable and reusable “ten times”.
Various river or sea ports in France have shown interest in ordering Var pudding.
“We are all looking for recyclable means to try not to overload our territory and our land”, notes Mr. Leonelli, happy to be part of this “local, ecological and united circuit”.
Next step: obtain accreditation from the labor inspectorate for production tools and the water pollution control body, before the start of large-scale production planned for the fall.