Had a hair cut recently? The clippings on the floor of hair salons, barber shops and pet groomers are being used to create a low-tech tool for cleaning up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since hair and fur absorb oil, volunteers stuff these clippings into donated pantyhose to make large sponge-like mats known as booms. You can see how this works in the YouTube video above, or by clicking here.

Matter of Trust, a San Francisco environmental non-profit that has used these absorbent booms to clean up oil spills since 1998, says it's received donations from all U.S. states and several countries that amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds of hair. It also accepts washed nylon pantyhose, even with small runs or tears.

In Gulf Coast cities, the group says volunteers are hosting Bar B Q parties, which they call "Boom B Q's," to assemble booms in their backyards. It says other "hair-raising" events include "Cut-a-thons" and "Shave-a-thons" to collect donations.

"For past spills such as the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, these simple booms have been highly effective and efficient at cleaning up oil," says Lisa Craig Gautier, Matter of Trust's co-founder. She says a pound of hair can absorb one quart of oil in one minute, and hair mats can be wrung out and reused up to 100 times.

She says her group is coordinating thousands of volunteers and directing donations to temporary warehouse space along the Gulf Coast.

Hair booms reflect the largely low-tech measures that are still being used to clean up oil spills.

These methods haven't kept with technological changes, The Washington Post reports today. In 1969, when people still used manual typewriters and rotary telephones, it says people attacked oil washing ashore from a spill near Santa Barbara, Calif., by skimming it off the surface, dispersing it with chemicals, and soaking it up with straw and other materials. The story adds: