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zero waste

Any uses for human hair?

Cat Knight

gardener

Posts: 504

Location: Winemucca, NV

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posted 2 years ago

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This list I found has several uses, but no instructions and I don't know how practical any are for home(stead) use. I did see Raven's deer repelling garden twine, but I don't have deer here so I still haven't found anything more attractive than throwing it in the compost...it just seems to take longer to break down than almost everything else. Any other suggestions?

As cool as "soy" sauce sounds, I'd be more interested in seedling mats.

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Douglas Alpenstock

pollinator

Posts: 5520

Location: Canadian Prairies - Zone 3b

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posted 2 years ago

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For ladies who cut their long hair, I believe there is a great demand for the purpose of making natural wigs for cancer patients.

Cat Knight

gardener

Posts: 504

Location: Winemucca, NV

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posted 2 years ago

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Douglas Alpenstock wrote:For ladies who cut their long hair, I believe there is a great demand for the purpose of making natural wigs for cancer patients.

If you are talking about Locks of Love, most of their hair goes to people with alopecia not cancer, and I have donated my hair when I cut it to them for decades.

I'm actually talking about the two brushfulls or more a week I naturally shed, not counting what I pull from the shower drain.

Altoids tin for scale, that's every two days. I was worse prior to 30.

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"Life finds a way"- Ian Malcolm
"We're all mad here" - The Cheshire Cat

Jim Fry

Posts: 610

Location: Stone Garden Farm Richfield Twp., Ohio

posted 2 years ago

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Something I have done for years, decades really, is to save all my hair or fingernail clippings. I take them outside and put them various places on our farm. The land, the soil itself, is composed of me. Our land, where my family has lived for generations, gives me and mine so much in food and pasture and beauty and place. And I give back all I produce. ~It isn't just hair. It is a compact between me and this place. Our home on Earth.

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Tereza Okava

steward & manure connoisseur

Posts: 4635

Location: South of Capricorn

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posted 2 years ago

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I don't know how much it helps to "repel" things (no deer here), but I put it in the garden for birds to get and eventually to break down. My daughter and her boyfriend both shaved their heads at one point and it all went into the garden, it probably took a good year and a half before i wasn't seeing it anymore, but it's got carbon and nitrogen.
or you could knit/crochet/weave a pillow, and use your weekly contributions for stuffing!

Shari Clark

gardener

Posts: 219

Location: East Beaches area of Manitoba, Zone 3

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posted 2 years ago

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I put it inside a toilet paper roll and use it as kindling in the winter. In the summer, it goes in the compost.

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Douglas Alpenstock

pollinator

Posts: 5520

Location: Canadian Prairies - Zone 3b

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Shari Clark wrote: In the summer, it goes in the compost.

You'll have to pardon me -- when I read this I had a sudden image of parting the compost on the side and combing it over with a garden fork. Silly goose!

Bethany Brown

Posts: 243

Location: Rural Pacific Northwest, Zone 8

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posted 2 years ago

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It is good for repelling all kinds of critters as well as adding to compost and/or mulch

Timothy Norton

Steward of piddlers

Posts: 6502

Location: Upstate NY, Zone 5, 43 inch Avg. Rainfall

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I found that short hair, the type that you cut on men usually with a buzz razer, mixed into planting holes for animal-prone flowers helps repel them as well as composts down over time. I do the same thing with my dogs shed.
Longer hair I have put out for birds nesting material but my grandmother has warned me that birds might fly and peck you for the hair still attached to your head! I haven't encountered that but who knows?

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Bethany Brown

Posts: 243

Location: Rural Pacific Northwest, Zone 8

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Timothy Norton wrote:
Longer hair I have put out for birds nesting material but my grandmother has warned me that birds might fly and peck you for the hair still attached to your head! I haven't encountered that but who knows?

Lol have you seen this happen? Sounds like an old story.

Timothy Norton

Steward of piddlers

Posts: 6502

Location: Upstate NY, Zone 5, 43 inch Avg. Rainfall

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I personally have not, but there is in fact a word for it! Kleptotrichy is the stealing of mammal hair by birds. I feel like we might be going down a rabbit hole...

Kate Flood

Posts: 33

Location: Australia

posted 2 years ago

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I add human and pet hair directly on top of my soil and then add a heavier mulch on top like wood chips or cardboard in a new no dig bed. This helps to stop the hair from flying away. Hair is full of slow release nitrogen and I find as it decomposes it becomes quite moisture retentive.

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