The strength of human hair, thanks to its protein structure, along with the fact that it can be easily dyed, makes it ideal for the textile industry. Plus, it has a much lower carbon footprint than most virgin materials, considering that it’s currently just waste. “We just did our first LCA [Life-Cycle Assessment]—we have 99 times less CO2 impact than cotton, from gate to gate,” Kollar says. “If we scale up, it’s going to be such a game changer. From cradle to gate, we basically have no impact.”
Currently, Human Material Loop sources its hair directly from salons, but plans to collaborate with waste management companies in the future. While human hair doesn’t come with the same animal welfare concerns as wool, ensuring that the supply chain is “100 per cent transparent” is still important.
Indeed, Decap became concerned with the dark side of the human hair trade, during their research. There have been reports of women in the Global South being exploited for either their own hair, or working as hair collectors for poverty wages. “The hair trade, even though it’s legal, is entirely unregulated,” the designer notes.
Still, if sourced in an ethical manner, human hair has a huge potential to be a sustainable material of the future. If one major barrier can be overcome, that is. “The challenge to scaling it up is to really make people accept this material as something new, and not something that’s disgusting,” Kollar concludes.