Recycling is good. Recycling used condoms to make hair ties is… not good.
“Used condoms are being recycled into hair bands in southern China , threatening to spread sexually-transmittable diseases they were originally meant to prevent…” Read more.
I’m not sure if these hair ties are used around the world, but it might not be a bad idea to check hair ties/hair accessories that you regularly buy to make sure the the product is harboring no… surprises.
- Further Discussion -
Jacob and I were discussing the idea of used condoms as the elastic base for hair accessories and he had some interesting points. If the used condoms were soaked in bleach, and then wrapped with material – would it be a good way to keep all those condoms out of landfills? He also mentioned that having a used condom in your hair would not spread STDs even if the material covering it did begin to fray, though the concern here being that some people use their mouths to hold hair ties while putting up their hair.
So here’s a question for you all, assuming used condoms were regulated somehow to make sure they were cleaned sufficiently, would you be comfortable with them as the base to your hair ties?
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Jacob
Dan
Lindsay
Rachel
eternalwizard
Ellen
*shrug* Why not? Who cares? 1) they’re clean and 2) it’s just hair. Plus, if there’s fabric over it, as per usual with most hair ties, then why would it even matter a little bit?
Following the link it becomes clear that the elastic for the hair band didn’t come from used condoms that consumers had somehow redonated (collection facilities like this don’t even exist) rather directly from the factories where they belonged to condoms which failed to meet safety tests (I suppose pressure and elasticity?). So completely clean. No problems.