Hairy Crowdsourcing

You rarely have the opportunity to put tranvestites, alpaca farmers and hairdressers in the same sentence, but all of these groups are now working together to protect the US Gulf Coast.  In a brilliant example of crowdsourcing – co-ordinated by the Matter of Trust charity – hair is being collected from hair salons in France, Spain, Brazil, Australia, Canada and the US, combined with animal fur from sheep and alpaca farmers and then stuffed into used nylon tights (some of which have been supplied by tranvestite group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence).  The resulting ‘hairy sausages’ (for that is what they look like) are then used as booms to help soak-up oil produced by the sunken BP platform in the Gulf of Mexico.  Here’s how AFP reported what has become my favourite empowerment story.