Whether her customers want just a trim or several inches of hair cut off, CJ Bundy, owner of CJ’s II in Lake Isabella, is collecting it all and shipping it to volunteers near the Gulf of Mexico to help with cleaning up the worst oil spill in United States’ history .

Bundy is one of hundreds of salons owners and dog groomers across the country that has teamed up with Matter of Trust, a nonprofit organization that collects, coordinates and ships hair, fur and fleece boom to help communities soak up oil from the April 20 oil spill.

“I went online and looked up different organizations that were participating and found their website and contacted them,” said Amanda Harkey, hairstylist at CJ’s and project coordinatior.

Amanda Harkey, a hairstylist at CJ’s II Salon in Lake Isabella, cuts Mysti Holliday’s hair on Monday afternoon. Holliday’s hair clippings will be collected and donated to help clean the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We’ve been collecting for about a month and we are getting ready to send in a 13-gallon bag of hair.”

According to Matter of Trust President Lisa Gautier, BP wants to use its own synthetic boom instead of using the thousands of natural boom that have been assembled with the help of many volunteers.

Matter of Trust is operating in the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill with permission from World Response Group, Inc. the owner of the patent for OTTI MAT. Matter of Trust's booms are for donation to the Gulf. They are made from donated fibers and assembled by volunteers.

Nineteen warehouses spread from Florida to Louisiana have been donated to store the natural boom.According to the Matter of Trust website, as of June 11, in the 19 warehouses at the Gulf and the one warehouse in San Francisco there are over 10 miles of boom stuffed. There are enough boxes, bags and pallets of fiber and donated nylons to make another 15 miles to total 25 miles of boom made from donations by volunteers in just over one month. With this sticky oil, people are rolling them [booms] on the beaches and putting them in shrimp bags that are tied together in strings from pier to pier and "sandbagging" by stuffing full of fiber donated burlap bags and piling them to protect from tides. Also, raking is becoming common practice to remove tar balls, but they disturb the turtle eggs and rolling the boom over the goo balls is less dangerous for them.

“I think it’s really good and it should help out a lot,” said Mysti Holliday, as she was getting her hair cut Monday afternoon.

For those interested in donating or collecting, visit matteroftrust.org.