Greenpeace slams Enbridge's 'hair-raising' campaign

Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler is tearing his hair out at the latest PR campaign by Enbridge Inc. to win support for its pipeline to Kitimat.

Enbridge announced Tuesday it plans to collect more than 200,000 kilograms of hair from 1,000 hair salons across North America and use it to make oil spill cleanup booms.

“I cannot believe they are saying this,” said a stunned Weyler. “It seems absurd. It seems like a joke.”

An Enbridge Inc. press release quoted Brent Carlton, the firm’s “sustainability initiatives director,” as saying that absorbent booms, made from human hair, played a role in cleaning up the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“A single pound of hair can absorb up to five pounds of oil and Enbridge’s formidable hair resource will be capable of absorbing up to 2.2 million pounds of oil,” stated Enbridge in the launch of its “MyHairCares” campaign.

But Weyler was more than skeptical.

“I’d like to see the research on that,” he fumed. “We have seen what happens in the Gulf of Mexico. An oil spill would decimate our economy.”

Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project will see twin pipelines being built between the Alberta’s tar sands and Kitimat in northwestern B.C.

From there, tankers will take petroleum down the Douglas Channel and along the B.C. coastline before heading to Asia.

Enbridge says its “hair reserve” will be made into 30,000 four-metre booms.

They’ll be “stored in numerous warehouses all along the 1,170-kilometre Northern Gateway route, along both sides of the 90-kilometre Douglas Channel, and along much of the pristine British Columbia coast,” said Enbridge.

The MyHairCares website says that when Enbridge finishes collecting the hair, “we will stuff it into old nylons and put it in mesh to strengthen the exterior. These sausage-like booms will be tied together to contain and absorb oil spills.”

Enbridge spokeswoman Dina Thompson admitted Tuesday that the firm knew people would scoff at the scheme.

“We went through this and we thought this is going to be considered the biggest joke alive but we’re trying to take an interesting angle,” she said.

Thompson said hair boom technology has been used for years and was pioneered by a salon owner in Alabama in 1995.

In the Philippines, in 2006, prisoners had their heads shaved to collect hair for oil booms after an oil spill.

“In the unfortunate event that anything should happen, we want to show that we have been working on this and we are prepared,” added Thompson. “We’re an oil company and our business is risky.”

Thompson said Enbridge has a good track record but had its own oil spill last year sending three million litres into the Kalamazoo River.

“It was pretty tragic,” she said.

dinwood@theprovince.com