During the pandemic, many people learned to cut their hair themselves at home. For some, this skill transferred into the post-pandemic world. Others, however, still prefer to go to a professional for a good haircut. In fact, 76% of American women say they go to a hair salon regularly.
For this woman, a simple haircut turned into a nightmare resembling a suspenseful thriller. After she found out that her hairdresser had been keeping her cut hair, the situation snowballed into inappropriate messages, stalking, and even fear for her life. As one commenter pointed out, it’s “giving ‘Baby Reindeer’ vibes.”
A good hairdresser is hard to find these days
This woman was weirded out by hers when she discovered they’d been keeping her cut hair in containers
Technically, hair that has been cut off still belongs to the client unless they’ve agreed to donate or sell it
Although the stylist in this story was clearly disturbed and stored the author’s hair for potentially nefarious reasons, we as clients don’t really know much about what happens with our hair after a hairdresser cuts it.
Throwing it out is the most logical and common explanation many of us would probably lean toward. However, we might be surprised to learn what some hairdressers or even hair owners do with their locks once they’re cut. According to Green Salon Collective, a UK-based sustainability initiative, 99% of hair cuttings from salons end up in landfills.
But there’s another way to dispose of it. According to Simone Jones, co-chair of Hair and Barber New Zealand, most hairdressers donate cut hair. Some give it away to organizations that make wigs for cancer patients and survivors; others donate it to alopecia patients.
“If we’ve cut off some hair that’s not long enough to donate for wigs, we might take some of it to do colour swatches or to do some practice,” Jones told The Spinoff. She said that it’s hard to imagine that anyone else would want to buy someone else’s cut hair. “That hair actually still belongs to the client,” Jones shared her opinion.
Hair cuttings can be used in several planet-friendly ways
Surprisingly (and perhaps a little disturbingly), there are other uses for human hair. Did you know that we can use it to clean up oil spills? But in 2021, the GSC started an initiative of placing nylon or cotton tubes filled with human hair clippings on beaches to stop oil spills from spreading further.
Perhaps you wouldn’t think it, but hair salons contribute significantly to landfill waste. Research shows that hair salons in the U.S. and Canada throw away about 31.5 tons of human hair per day. In Europe, that number is even seven times higher. If it doesn’t end up in the landfill, it gets incinerated and contributes to the release of even more harmful greenhouse gases.
Hair is like a magnet for oil. 95% of hair’s make-up is keratin, a fibrous protein that essentially attracts oil from water. According to a 2018 study, buffers made of human hair can absorb 0.84 grams of oil onto their surface for every gram of hair. Compared to polypropylene, which is usually used to mop up oil spills, that’s significantly more.
Hair can also be a great fertilizer. It’s rich in nitrogen, and one strand of hair contains five times more nitrogen than a pile of cow manure. In the 2000s, scientists tried hair as fertilizer and found that it’s useful for growing basil, sage, and peppermint, horticultural crops like lettuce, and ornamental plants like marigold and foxglove.
Hair is also great for mulching. Researchers found that it helps prevent water loss for avocado, lemon, and olive trees. “If you use our hair mats on top of the soil, you use 48 percent less water,” Mattia Carenini, co-author of the study, explained to National Geographic.
“I may have UNDER-reacted to the issue,” the woman later wrote
“This is nuts,” people reacted in the comments
“This person is certainly not stable,” the woman pointed out when replying to commenters
Later, she received another disturbing message: “Ur never coming back dont makeme laugh”
The story only got crazier from there, as the hairstylist attempted to get the woman’s credit card cancelled
“Hopefully, the police has scared them enough,” commenters sent good wishes to the woman and her husband
In a final update months later, the woman detailed how she had to change her life to get rid of the crazy hairstylist
“Mentally ill people can wreak such havoc in people’s lives,” commenters reacted
