“Airplanes have been changing the flight routes of where birds fly …” said Lisa Gautier, president and founder of the nonprofit Matter of Trust. “We’ve been vacuuming up all of our own hair and our pet fur. We’ve been corralling animals in with fences. We’ve been changing the migration routes of animals with our roads. And so, quietly over the last couple 100 years, we’ve been changing how much animal fiber hits the ground, and nobody thinks about it.”
But perhaps we should — since falling hair, wool and fur nourish the soil. However, impacts to biodiversity — including an 85-percent decline in the biomass of wild terrestrial mammals over the last 100,000 years — have altered this process. On the bright side, we’re an abundant mammal with resources to spare. In fact, we generate about 810,000 tons of waste hair each year, while our pets and livestock create tons of fur and wool annually.
FoodPrint – The unexpected role of hair, fur and wool in sustainable agriculture
Mar 30th, 2026