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My barber offered to save bags of human hair to compost. He used to save it for someone else but that guy passed away. I am leaning against taking it but the barber said the other guy swore it was great for his compost.

What do you think?

it's good for composting - although not everyone sees it that way:

government in action:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... pings.html

Moderation in all things.

Your hair, the combings from the dog is fine. The product of a barber shop can outgass excess sulfur. To me it is rather like composting mother-in-law.

Your millage may vary, but I won't do that again.

composting mother-in-law.

Your millage may vary, but I won't do that again.

Never mind, I don't want too know.

Eric

Hmmm?
Have you considered spinning hair into.... a yarn then weaving, knitting or crocheting it into something useful? You would need hair of oh probably a couple of inches, anything smaller than that would compost, or how about filling a pillow? I am thinking of 'horse hair' filled things....

Now what did happen to the MIL?

I'm going to pick up some when I have my hair trimmed again but I'm just going to put it in a net bag and hang it in a limb to help the birds with their nests. I've also cut small pieces of yarn but some of it is dropped by the birds and makes a colorful mess.

I ask at the shop for my own hair trimmings. Apparently that's ok to do. I don't compost it though. I use it as a snail barrier. They don't like to crawl over it. It pokes and sticks to them and makes them writhe getting it off.

>> Never mind, I don't want too know.

mother-in-law plant = sansevieria

Interesting thread. I had a Salon for years, many parts of our house are insulated with bags of hair.

Most human hair is composted in the end, isn't it?

Composting implies it's turned into humus and returned to the soil. The vast majority of it (in the US anyway) is landfilled. It will decompose in there eventually, but I wouldn't call that composting.

Too bad about the English barber. Obviously bureaucracy is alive and well and does not necessarily act in the best interest of individuals or the planet. If I was him I'd put out one bag out of 5 and take the rest home. Then they can't accuse him of not disposing, and how would they know what the volume should be?

Doesn't hair keep growing after - the end? IDK. Truth or fiction? Getting my hair cut later this week. I will take it home but not for my compost bin. I will give it to the birds for nesting material.

Tom and Eric as always.

Along with bones and teeth, archeologists can find (in less ancient digs) human hair. This tells me that hair is very slow to decompose. For a while, I was putting my dogs' hair (undercoat, lots of it available in Berners) into the compost, but it just cycled around, like peach pits, without any visible change, so alas it went out.

Until I learned to spin in May 2012. But that's another story....

The Mummies of Urumchi, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, probably contains the most detailed description of human hair and textiles being used to identify the likely origin of long-dead people found by archeologists that had appeared as of its publication date (April 2000). It's been a while since I read it, and my copy is elsewhere in the house, so I can't speak to whether or not DNA analysis was attempted in the late '90s on these individuals.

The three- to four-thousand-year-old human hair retained distinctly different colors on several individuals mummified by the starkly arid Taklamakan Desert in what is now the Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China (aka Chinese Turkestan).

It won't hurt anything to put human hair into your compost, but I wouldn't expect it to break down quickly. If it does, please be sure to measure the temperature of your pile and note how frequently/seldom you turn it.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

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I've been composting my long hair and my nails for a long time without a problem. I keep a small, clean waste basket in the bathroom to collect the stuff. Beard trimmings too. I'm a direct contributor in that regard.

I've composted dog and cat fur. It's only the clumps that are a problem so mix it well. If I didn't mix the grass clippings well enough they would clump up and take longer to break down. I'd end up with road apples curiously enough. Shredded paper clumps up nicely too if you don't mix it in well.

Follow the 10 percent rule and mix it well and it's a non-issue.

Dumping a garbage bag full into a full 3' x3' x3' bin would be a lot of work to mix it all together and get it all blended. Maybe just add some at a time. I'm sure it will keep.

to sense
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