Why such low-tech solutions as hair mats and mushrooms may be the answer to oil-spill woes You are what you eat—unless you’re an oyster mushroom. In that case, you can indulge in some of the most toxic, noxious petroleum products available and turn them into...
Project to convert oil-soaked hair mats, mushrooms into dirt Preparing the compost bins to begin make the “lasagna” of oily toxic mix. Lisa Gautier, who is leading the charge to use human hair mats to soak up oil from the Bay Area spill, has been invited...
Ocean lovers help clean an oil-covered beach with an eco-friendly fiber that grows on you. When the container ship Cosco Busan struck the Oakland Bay Bridge on Wednesday, November 7, it ripped a gash in its tank and spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into...
A group of guerrilla volunteers is cleaning oil from San Francisco’s beaches using an unorthodox, albeit totally organic, method: human hair and mushrooms. CONTINUE READING… SF Gate, Nov 14th, 2007 ...
SAN FRANCISCO BAY OIL SPILL Their mats absorb the slick stuff, then oyster mushrooms turn it to compost Lisa Gautier shows how the globs of oil stick to the hair mats. Lisa Gautier operates a nonprofit called matteroftrust.org that reuses products. She is providing...
Lisa Gautier’s environmentalist career didn’t begin with a treetop hunger strike or a bracing voyage on a Greenpeace boat. It began with an old rug. “I bought a new rug and I didn’t know what to do with the old one,” says the 36-year-old San Franciscan. So Gautier...
The deluge of closures and cutbacks at tech startups is creating at least one beneficial side effect. Charity workers who distribute furniture and gadgetry that companies leave behind are finding themselves with plenty of stock. That’s how it seems at...
In 1989, Phillip McCrory watched a CNN story on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Seeing the difficulty volunteers were having cleaning oil from the fur of otters, McCrory wondered if perhaps human hair could be used to soak up oil. His curiosity could revolutionize how we...
