Matter of Trust - Gulf Coast Oil Spill

My husband is from Louisiana, so this oil spill in the gulf is really affecting him and bothering him. Aside from the obvious fact that oil spills are horrible for the environment, he's also pretty upset that until a few days ago, there wasn't a lot of news about the spill. Sure there were stories about it, but the main facts were kept hidden from the public (just do a google search today and you'll find several articles from several different news sources talking about the fact that the extent of the oil spill was kept hidden from the general public). The fact of the matter is, there are millions of gallons of oil that have been leaked into the gulf, and its not slowing down any time soon.


So instead of complaining about the government and big businesses and the "wonderful" way they have covered up the extent of the spill, I thought I'd tell you about an organization called Matter of Trust.

Matter of Trust is an organization trying to provide ways to help clean up the oil. Right now they are collecting human hair and animal fur to make booms to soak up the oil. Their website states that we wash out hair to remove oils from it, so why not use our hair to soak up oil? Hair salons, pet groomers and individuals around the entire world have been shipping boxes of hair and fur to this great organization. In my cat filled house, we've been filling a box with fur taken from brushing the cats, to mail down there.

Obviously, even with the amount of donations that they are getting, Matter of Trust can't remove all of the oil on their own (especially since there seems to be no plan to stop the leak any time soon), but the way I see it is that any amount, no matter how small, helps.

Plus, at the moment, I don't believe that the hair/fur booms are actually being used in the gulf, because the idea of them has been rejected, but if you look up some news articles, read the Matter of Trust website and/or visit their Facebook page you'll see how the organization has been pushing for their use, and how more people are starting to understand that they work. So hopefully, in the very near future, they will be put to use completely. In the meantime, volunteers are working to make miles and miles of booms to be ready to go as soon as possible.

So if you haven't heard of Matter of Trust I encourage you to check it out! Their mailing address isn't posted on their website because they have several different locations in the gulf to mail boxes too, so you will have to join, and then have a mailing address emailed to you. A few weeks ago I received an address in New Orleans to send boxes too, and then about 2 weeks later, I received another email with a new mailing system. Basically, the state you are living in determines which address you are supposed to mail boxes too, in order to not overwhelm one place specifically. I'm not sure if the mailing system has changed again, but that is the reason behind not posting this info on their actual website.

In my house we groom the cats pretty often, and all we do is throw away the fur that comes off of them. I figure I can take some time out of my day to put the fur into a box, seal up the box, drive to the post office, and mail it out to do my small part in helping the clean up effort.