Eco-friendly mats made of waste hair tested to grow soybeans in Japan
The Japanese branch of a U.S. environmental organization has launched a pilot project to recycle hair discarded by salons into soil covers for sustainable farming, Kyodo reports.
Matter of Trust Japan, the Tokyo office of the San Francisco-based organization, began a five-month trial in July, making 30 mats out of human hair for a soybean field with an area of 20 square meters in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo.
Hair mats help to retain soil moisture and reduce evaporation, while providing nutrients such as nitrogen and keratin, it says.
"I knew about hair mats for cleaning up an oil spill along the coastline of Mauritius in 2021 and thought of adapting this technique to Japan," said Nanako Hama, 45, the founder of the Japanese branch.
Such mats have been used in a similar project in Chile since 2021, helping to increase harvests by 30 percent, according to Matter of Trust Japan.
The mats, made of hairs 10 centimeters or longer on the exterior and packed with shorter ones inside, require about 600 to 700 grams of hair and take 30 to 40 minutes to make.
Since the Japanese branch was established in 2023, Hama and other skilled volunteers have worked together, entwining hair donated by salons with a special machine provided by the U.S. head office.
"I want to change the image of hair waste that actually has great potential to become a new resource," Hama said.
Earlier, Japan's first osmotic power plant has begun operating in Fukuoka.