CutOff Recycle
Student uses his head to launch
Innovative human hair recycling company David Denis came up with the science behind Cutoff Recycle – his company which turns waste human hair into farming fertilizer – while still at high school. He talks to Paa magazine about his long-term plans for an award-winning business that now employs a 100-strong team and is taking on Arusha’s pollution problem.
R
ecent social distancing
Denis was a 19-year-old student at the
measures have meant many
School of St Jude, in Arusha, Tanzania,
of us have left it longer than
“debating in the school barber shop
usual between haircuts. Sitting in the
with friends whether human hair could
salon and watching your lockdown
be recycled,” he says.
locks pile up on the floor as the hairdresser clips away, it is tempting
School backing
to wonder where all that hair goes.
Thirteen years at St Jude’s – a charity-
Few have pursued those thoughts,
Start-up (Above) David Denis with CutOff Recycle co-founder Ojung'u Jackson and (above right) with members of his team
keratin, he started joining the dots. “I knew the constituent elements of proteins are nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and potassium – all of which
funded school that provides free
are macro elements needed for plant
though, as far as David Denis, the
primary and secondary education to
growth,” he says. “As hair contains
chief executive of CutOff Recycle, a
the poorest and brightest children of
keratin, I realized it must also contain
Tanzanian company that recycles
the Arusha Region – had taught Denis
all of those elements.”
waste human hair to make fertilizer
“to be curious and find passion in
for arable farms. It is an ingenious
innovation,” he says. Ever supportive,
Testing the theory
idea with far-reaching effects that
his teachers encouraged him to
Denis and classmate Jackson began to
has seen the company’s co-founders,
pursue his idea.
test that theory by running a series of
23-year-old Denis and Ojung’u
The keen science student, who
experiments in the St Jude’s laboratory.
Jackson, garlanded with awards and
chose biology, chemistry and physics
With the support of the school’s lab
overseeing a business that has grown
as his A-levels, had been taught about
technician, they honed a process of
to involve a 100-strong workforce.
the structure of proteins and knowing
hydrolysis – a chemical reaction in
human hair contained one of its own,
which water is used to break down the
The germ of the idea started when
16
Paa Tanzania
