{"podcast":{"title":"Business for Good Podcast","slug":"business-for-good-podcast-641837","podcast_index_feed_id":641837,"rss_url":"https://businessforgoodpodcast.libsyn.com/rss","website_url":"http://www.businessforgoodpodcast.com/","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/2/b/9/6/2b963ca360081ecfd959afa2a1bf1c87/B4G_Green.jpg","author":"Paul Shapiro","episode_count":192,"summary":"Join host Paul Shapiro as he talks with some of the leading start-up entrepreneurs and titans of industry alike using their businesses to help solve the world's most pressing problems. Whether it's climate change, unsustainable agricultural practices, cyber threats, coral reef die-offs, nuclear waste storage, plastic pollution, or more, many of the world's greatest challenges are also exciting business opportunities. On this show, we feature business leaders who are marrying profit and purpose by inventing solutions to both build a better world and offer investors a bang for their bucks.","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/business-for-good-podcast-641837"},"episode":{"title":"Ready for a Carpet Made of Human Hair? This Entrepreneur Turns Salon Waste into Textiles","slug":"ready-for-a-carpet-made-of-human-hair-this-entrepreneur-turns-salon-waste-into-textiles","published_at":"2025-11-15T14:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/business-for-good-podcast-641837/ready-for-a-carpet-made-of-human-hair-this-entrepreneur-turns-salon-waste-into-textiles","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/business-for-good-podcast-641837","url":"https://businessforgoodpodcast.libsyn.com/ready-for-a-carpet-made-of-human-hair-this-entrepreneur-turns-salon-waste-into-textiles","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/businessforgoodpodcast/B4G_EP_178_Final.mp3?dest-id=761849","summary":"What if one solution to fashion's waste problem is literally growing on our own heads? Every day, salons around the world toss out millions of pounds of freshly cut human hair — a clean, protein-rich, renewable resource that mostly ends up in landfills or incinerators. But what if that so-called waste could become the next sustainable textile? My guest on this episode, Zsofia Kollar, is the founder and CEO of Human Material Loop , a Netherlands-based startup turning salon hair waste into a high-performance fibre that behaves like wool — but with 43 times lower CO₂ emissions, 20 times less water use, and none of the animal cruelty or plastics. Their branded fiber, called Adara , is already being spun into things like carpets, curtains, and acoustic panels — and it's made from something we all grow ourselves. In this conversation, Zsofia and I talk about how she got the idea to build an entire materials company out of human hair, how her technology works, why hair is such a strong and versatile material, the \"ick\" factor of human-derived fibres, and how she's scaling her model so that salons and HML benefit alike. If you think using human hair in textiles sounds strange, stick around — because by the end of this episode, you might just want a carpet made from your own cut-offs. I'll let Zsofia make the case. Discussed in this episode Washington Post coverage of Human Material Loop's work. Vogue and CNN have covered their work, too. Zoroastrians sometimes practice sky burial on a Tower of Silence , in which vultures are allowed to consume a recently deceased human. Our past episode on human composting with Recompose. Get to Know Zsofia Kollar Zsofia Kollar is a forward-thinking entrepreneur passionate about sustainable innovation. Science and design are crucial in the com…","meta_description":"What if one solution to fashion's waste problem is literally growing on our own heads? Every day, salons around the world toss out millions of pounds of f…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2137,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/business-for-good-podcast-641837/episodes/ready-for-a-carpet-made-of-human-hair-this-entrepreneur-turns-salon-waste-into-textiles/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/business-for-good-podcast-641837/ready-for-a-carpet-made-of-human-hair-this-entrepreneur-turns-salon-waste-into-textiles.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}