For starters, here are some facts. According to the United Nations trade statistics, China and India exported more than $154 million worth of human hair last year. That is precisely because Asian hair grows the fastest and has the greatest elasticity.

Moreover, Indian hair is considered to be fine, lustrous and free from chemical treatments, making it suitable for manufacturing wigs. India has thousands of hair exporters. But sources are few. The biggest one is Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam in Andhra Pradesh. The hair collected from the tonsuring is reportedly separated into five different varieties. The 600 barbers employed by the temple shave the pilgrims’ heads 24 hours a day. Last year, it auctioned around 80 tonne of hair worth Rs 60 crore.

The hair exported from India is either raw or processed/polished. The profit margins are around 15% and 50% respectively. Not a bad deal considering there is a huge demand for Indian hair in France, UK, US, Canada, and a few other European countries. But, why stop at exports? There’s more to human hair than exports. There are some entrepreneurs who have realized the true potential of hair and are making millions by the same. All we need to do is replicate the model. Find an entrepreneur who dares to think beyond the obvious and discover the oblivion. Here are a few businesses opportunities waiting in the wings.

Human hair has a quality of adsorbing, rather than absorbing oil. That is, oil does not bond with the hair; instead it accumulates in layers on the hair’s surface. This helps in easy recovery and reuse of the oil by simply squeezing it from the collected bundles. Moreover, oil-saturated bundles of hair can be burned as fuel.Used in Oil SpillsSomewhere in Alabama, 20 years back, a hairstylist was watching television coverage of the massive oil spill in Alaska. He noticed oil-covered otters swimming to shore and how their fur soaked up the oil. This was his cue to something big. The million-dollar question harassing his mind was “could human hair trap and hold spilled oil?” After conducting a home experiment using five pounds of human hair he had found his answer.

So, Phil McCrory, the hairdresser became a researcher. The efficiency of human hair as an oil adsorbent has been tested and validated by NASA. It is proven by NASA that human hair adsorbs up to five times its weight in oil while not retaining water.

So the idea converted into oil-capturing hair mats, marketed by SmartGrow, a Florida- based company as Ottimats. Ottimats uses recycled human hair that removes oil from water. Ninety-eight percent of the oil extracted by the Ottimats can be recovered. Ottimats has a tensile strength of approximately 38 lbs. and can be used in large-scale petroleum recovery.

So, the point is, why can’t a similar model be applied in BANGLADESH. Why can’t we have our own oil capturing mats? Considering that two major oil choke points of the world, the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca, are on the west and east coasts of India. With the routes being accident-prone, a product that adsorbs oil does have a market. It is estimated that 25,000 pounds of hair in nylon collection bags might be sufficient to adsorb 170,000 gallons of spilled oil. Tests showed that a gallon of oil could be adsorbed in less than two minutes with McCrory’s method. It is also considered a potential cost-saving method. Conventional oil cleanup methods cost approximately $10 to recover a gallon of oil in the US. McCrory’s system costs as little as $2 per gallon and offers the benefit of recovering oil for fuel.

Moreover, the risk of a major oil spill occurring along the west coast of India is considerably higher now, as there has been a significant increase in all types of maritime trade. A major oil spill could cause widespread ecological damage, and cripple or destroy marine commercial operations. Therefore, continued discharge of oil into the sea can pose a potential risk of severe pollution to the sensitive coastal ecosystem.