🍃 The future of textiles might be hiding in hair salons

The textile industry has a waste problem.

It is one of the largest and least transparent production systems we have built. 

Materials move through long global supply chains. 

Fibres are difficult to trace and enormous amounts of waste are generated along the way.

At the same time, we discard valuable materials every day without a second thought.

Human hair is one of them.

When it is on our heads, it is valuable. The moment it falls to the floor in a salon, it is treated as waste and thrown away.

Yet hair is made primarily of keratin, one of the strongest natural proteins found in nature.

A Dutch company called Human Material Loop is asking a different question about that material.

Instead of treating hair as something to dispose of, they collect it from salons and donation centres, clean it, and process it into fibres. 

Those fibres can then be turned into yarns or non-woven materials that become textiles.

The applications range from clothing to insulation and carpets.

What makes this example interesting is not just the material itself.

It is the mindset behind it.

Rather than asking consumers to behave differently, the system is redesigned so that an overlooked by-product becomes a resource. 

Something that once ended up in bins now re-enters the material cycle.

This is often where meaningful progress begins, not by adding more rules or pressure at the end of a system, but by redesigning how materials flow through it from the start.

And yes, the idea can feel unusual at first.

New perspectives often do.

👉  Would you wear clothing made from recycled human hair if it meant a cleaner and more transparent textile system?

If you’d like to watch the short video I shared with a post about this on my LinkedIn page, click here.

Best,

Jasper