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Recycling hair to create functional furniture? For some reason, news of a recycled hair chair reminds me of the pet hair pillows that we covered last year.

Hair trimmings at barbershops and beauty salons are often swept up and discarded. But a former London hairdresser, who is now a researcher at London South Bank University, has found a use for the excess cuttings — a chair made out of human hair.

In the future, additional products, such as structural beams, shoes, clothing, mascara and boat parts, may also be made out of human hair, which is “a cut above” fiberglass and many other petroleum-based products, according to the chair’s inventor, Ronald Thompson.

With all the extra hair that falls at the barbershop & salon, who’s to say that these type of furnishings won’t make it on to the larger commercial scene?