Hometown Hero: Dora Fields of Northport collects discarded hair for Matters of Trust nonprofit

Every Saturday, Northport High School senior Dora Fields picks up a 13-gallon garbage bag filled with hair from a local salon — all in the name of helping the environment.

Fields, 17, recently started an initiative called Strands of Sustainability, which promotes the collection of “waste hair” — the snips of hair that are typically discarded by salons and barber shops. She then mails it to San Francisco-based nonprofit Matter of Trust. The organization uses the donated strands to create “hair mats” that can be used to soak up petrochemicals derived from crude oil and natural gas, the organization said.

“It’s the best idea ever,” said Jennifer DeNunzio, owner of Jackie Shawn Salon in Northport, which participates in Fields’ effort. “The hair is going into the ground [as waste] anyway, so you might as well put it to good use. I think it’s fabulous.”

Fields said she has been donating her hair since the age of 5 to organizations such as Locks of Love, but she started to look for other uses when she realized that her tresses didn’t grow fast enough to donate each year. Locks of Love, for example, requires that the minimum hair length for a donation be 10 inches.

“It just didn’t feel right for me to get a haircut without donating it somewhere,” Fields said. “So, I found out about hair mats, and through that I started to explore the world of what happens to hair when we throw it out. That’s how the idea came to be.”

So far, Strands of Sustainability has attracted about 20 ambassadors from countries as far as Slovenia, and Fields has asked them to visit their local salons and barber shops in an effort to encourage the owners to save and donate waste hair. The ambassadors will then periodically mail it to Matter of Trust, she said.

Fields said she and her ambassadors have collected more than 1,000 inches of waste hair since the initiative’s inception in March.

“The idea of utilizing waste is something that’s really important to me, because we’re just throwing out things that could be used to help our environment — and hair is just one specific example,” she said.

Fields’ environmental efforts were praised by Matter of Trust president Lisa Craig Gautier, who noted that hair mats can collect up to five times their weight in oil.

“One of the reasons we love this program so much is that it’s very empowering to youth,” Gautier said. “I love seeing students show people how local fiber can go to local solutions.”

For more information on Strands of Sustainability, visit bit.ly/4f3KBc1.

By Michael R. Ebert

michael.ebert@newsday.com

Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.