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."