Dallas pet salon collects fur to use in Gulf oil spill

Come split hairs for a good cause.

DALLAS — Best way to do your part to help sop oil in the Gulf of Mexico? A little hair of the dog.

A Dallas pet groomer is collecting an incredible amount of pet hair through three hair-raisers, of sorts. Boxes of pet hair collected at The Petropolitan will be shipped south on June 10 and made into a “hair boom,” which will be placed on shorelines to collect oil from the recent offshore oil rig spill.

How to make a hair boom

Video courtesy of Matter of Trust, a non-profit sending supplies to clean up the oil spill on the coast.

A hair boom is a piece of pantyhose shoved full of about 20 pounds of pet and human hair. According to Petropolitan co-owner Chris Watts, 20 pounds of pet hair can collect 200 pounds of oil. The bags of hair will be shipped to representatives of the non-profit Matter of Trust, who have been given approval by the Coast Guard to donate booms for the coast.

The collection made sense to Watts because their groomers have to throw pet hair in the trash otherwise. Some groomers send it off to spin fur into yarn, but Petropolitan hasn't done that. “I've always been intrigued – if it got wet, would it smell like a wet dog? Does it collect fleas?” he joked. Instead, he plans on collecting pet hair for the current oil spill in the Gulf – and then continuing to collect hair indefinitely to send to other parts of the world.

One woman is making a sacrifice that brought Watts to tears: She's donating the hair of her former pets – hair that she kept as remembrances of those beloved animals. “We talked a little bit and compared it to sprinkling ashes,” Watts said. “That's a huge thing for her.”

Pet owners also are donating cat hair, a surprise to this writer. Between shaving dogs (and some cats), Petropolitan itself gathers about one 30-gallon bag of hair a day. The summer weather makes for prime-time pet shaving.

“There's no sending money, there's no giving blood. People can help through their animals,” he said. “They see their dogs' hair is being used for a good cause.”

The upside to grooming: fancy hairdos!

About 500 pounds of pet hair were collected at the first event, hosted on May 15. Petropolitan will also be collecting large supplies of pet hair on May 22 and 29 between 9 a.m. and noon. And, the UPS store on Cedar Springs has donated their services to ship the first 1,500 pounds free. Hair salons are also pitching in to donate human hair to Petropolitan's offices, and people who don't have pets or who have short-haired animals can donate panty hose. “As long as there aren't runs in them, they can definitely be used,” Watts said. (Tough to find panty hose without runs – but there must be some somewhere.)

“[Pet hair is] a commodity that would otherwise go to waste. It makes me happy that there's a natural way that could help end this disaster,” Watts said.