Eyeglasses Made of Human Hair 97
Mightee writes "Graduates from Royal College of Art have discovered a way to turn hair cuttings that parlors throw away as waste into sustainable eyewear named Hair Glasses. The idea behind this is to 'Go Green' by stopping the use of Petroleum-based plastic frames and use an easily available, environment friendly and renewable resource."
Re:Token marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
The point isn't that they're made out of human hair. The point is that things we *assume* have to be made from petroleum could be made from *other raw materials*.
The proposed "solution" here isn't making everything we make out of plastic from human hair. The proposed solution is to apply chemistry and ingenuity to problems whose solutions we've taken for granted for the last fifty years or so. It's the materials science wizardry that makes these things cool, not the (ugh) design. Some years ago the company Arthur D. Little set out to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear -- actually they made a nylon-like polymer out of the collagen that forms the bulk of the ear. You'd probably say that was a pointless exercise since actual silk is cheaper, not to mention nylon, but that's because you're missing the point.
Even if you don't give a rat's ass a bout the environment, this is the stuff we'll need to maintain a modern, polymer material dependent lifestyle when petroleum becomes prohibitively expensive. There are plenty of valid criticisms of the environmental movement, but one of the *in*valid ones is that environmentalists want us to live with the tech level of medieval peasants. Possibly some do, but the serious thinkers are well aware of the need for advanced technology to provide an acceptable, sustainable standard of living.