MaterialDistrict

Human hair rope

Code
ONA598
Country
United Kingdom
Brand
Sanne Visser

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- story by MaterialDistrict

How can we use human hair waste to create new materials and design outputs? Human hair is a natural resource that will be increasing in the future since the world’s population is rapidly rising. The UK alone ‘creates’ around 6.5 million kilograms of human hair waste annually, which mostly ends up in landfill or slowly decays in the environment. This causes several problems for both the environment and human health, releasing toxic gasses and choking the drainage system. However, human hair has many valuable properties; it has a high tensile strength, is thermally insulating, flexible, oil-absorbent and is light weight. This project explores the pure potential of hair as a raw material, reducing waste, environmental problems and the pressure on other non-renewable materials. The project consists of a range of utilitarian objects and tools that helps create a system all the way from collection through to the end application.

Material Properties