Landscape Architect Articles

Human Hair: New Fertilizer?01-08-09 | News

Human Hair: New Fertilizer?

A Mississippi State University horticulturist claims human hair has potential as a synthetic fertilizer alternative. While offering substantial energy savings, the slow rate of decay can be problematic.

Human hair could be used instead of chemical fertilizers for some plants like lettuce, new research in a horticultural journal suggests.

The hair, which is manufactured into cubes from barbershop and hair-salon waste, provides nitrogen for plants as it decomposes, just as natural-gas-derived sources like ammonia do.

?EUR??,,????'?????<

In fact, studies carried out in the 1960s found that human hair contains about 15 percent nitrogen.

The last 50 years have seen enormous increases in the use of synthetic fertilizers using ammonia from the Haber-Bosch process. Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba, one of the world?EUR??,,????'?????<

But all that nitrogen takes a lot of energy to produce. Smil has also estimated that the Haber-Bosch process uses about 1 percent of the world?EUR??,,????'?????<

The new study, published in HortTechnology, shows that both lettuce and wormwood, the psychoactive ingredient in absinthe, grow about as well with hair as a fertilizer as they do with chemical fertilizers. The plants seem to be able to use about 50 percent of the nitrogen contained in the hair.

The only catch is that the hair takes a while to start decomposing and releasing nutrients into the soil, so it has to be paired with more fast-acting fertilizers.

Source: Wired.com.