Fertilizer made from the hair a barber throws away

On a class excursion to the landfills, Bwire Bwire watched waste being sorted for recycling: plastic, glass, anything containing aluminum or iron. Human hair was not sorted at all, just dumped or incinerated, and when he asked why, he says, "the answer was simple: it has no value."

Back on campus he called his barber. The hair they cut off, he was told, is mostly burned, buried or taken to landfills. He is a master's student in environmental sciences at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), and the answer disturbed him as an environmentalist: hair waste, he says, clogs waterways and, as it decomposes, releases gases including methane.

“Unlike other types of waste, such as plastics, agricultural or food waste, which have gained attention for recycling, human hair waste remains overlooked.”

Bwire Bwire

So he went to the library in his spare time. Human hair, he found, is rich in keratin, a protein he says is 70% nitrogen. At first it was just a fact. Two months later he watched smallholder farmers on the TV news describe their struggle to afford the rising price of imported chemical fertilizer, and a report the next day put the figure at 8 out of 10 smallholder farmers. "Right there, the fact that human hair is made of 70% nitrogen crossed my mind again," he says.

He asked the laboratory manager at his university for permission to run simple experiments on weekends with non-consumable equipment, and got it. After several tests he extracted nitrogen and produced the first version of his prototype, a liquid organic fertilizer for smallholder farmers in rural Arusha.

Then he asked the farmers. In a brief survey, he says, some hesitated because of a belief that using other people's hair is black magic and culturally inappropriate, so he brought in agricultural extension officers, who understood the technical side and helped him gain the farmers' trust. Early adopters tested the prototype. Their feedback was that the fertilizer has an unpleasant smell, one that "even prevents them from keeping it at home."

His next step is additives to lower the odor. Through the literature he has found ways to remove the smell, both biological and chemical, and he wants safety tests done before farmers use it.

"My motivation for this stems from my aspiration to see us humans live sustainably with the environment without harming it," he says.