Salon helps Gulf effort

Addictive Trendz hair salon at 23 E. Madison on the Iola square is helping clean up the growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico caused when an oil rig there sank at the end of April.
Cassie Jones, one of the salon’s owners, said she was contacted by her beauty supply distributor about joining the cause.
Salons across the nation are gathering hair clippings left over from hair cuts and shipping them, plus old nylons, to Matter of Trust, a California-based agency that is creating human hair-filled booms and mats to help soak up the offending oil.
Hair is stuffed into old pantyhose and collated into booms for use in the water. Hair clippings are also formed into large mats that are used to soak up the spill and to help clean up oil-coated birds and animals.
The oil spill started when a British Petroleum oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. Efforts to cap the well have been unsuccessful. About 200,000 gallons of oil are being released into the Gulf daily.
Addictive Trendz will send all clippings from May haircuts to Louisiana, Jones said.
“It’s one way we, as a business in the community, can help out,” she said.
“A lot of living green takes effort,” she noted. “This doesn’t take anything — people are going to get haircuts anyway — and it helps more than people know.”
Addictive Trendz has “been collecting hair since Tuesday,” Jones said. Already the salon has half a large bag to send.