Off with their hair at Versailles ... for a cause

Versailles palace staff got free haircuts for a cause

at a makeshift hair salon inside the chateau

The hair is being collected to extract keratin

by hair recycling start-up Capillum

The company’s founders say keratin can replace plastics in agriculture and horticulture

It can also be used to cure skin conditions and clean up crude oil from the seas

thanks to its oil-absorbing properties

(SOUNDBITE) (French) CO-FOUNDER OF CAPILLUM HAIR RECYCLING STARTUP, CLEMENT BALDELLOU, SAYING:

"Every day, more than a million French people go for a haircut. This represents 4,000 tonnes of generated waste a year, so 70 million liters. That's an enormous amount of waste that usually goes in the bin, and so we decided to take the hair out of the waste sector."