Does anyone know anything about using white coir as an absorbent fiber for remediating oil spills? How about the procedure of promoting such natural materials for combating the Gulf Spill? There are many layers and legal considerations, but I wonder what private citizens might be able to do?

One definition of the fiber is found here:
http://www.hayleys-exports.com/AboutCoirFibre.html

and Wiki says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coir

To you, my reader: can you contact companies that process a given fiber (coir) and learn about promoting its industrial use as an oil absorbent? I'm trying to figure out how to do anything.

Still looking for name of Australian company that uses coir for remediation of oil spills. We have a coconut plantation owner friend and tonnes of coir. They typically make brown coir (used for mats and as peat compost fertilizer) but it's just a difference of processing green immature coconuts rather than brown ones.

I have contacted the Coconut Cultivation Board's Regional Manager for my friend's area, Kurenegala. Does anyone have contacts with the Kerali (Indian) plantations? I would at least like to know more about this effort and see if we as citizens can promote it.

I am trying to figure out how a country trying to promote coconut planting through a soft loans plan known in English as “Kapruka Ayojana Loan Scheme” can boost excess production for the purposes of generating fiber for the oil remediation effort?


Thanks, I'm tired of the oil spill and I've been putting out the intention to find something to do. So any information would be helpful.

White coir does seem to be a good material for the clean-up. I haven't found out how they dispose of it, but if a company's been using it as a commercial clean-up substance, one would LIke to think it's been thought through. What I am interested now is trying to find patrons for the cause. Did youknow there's a Princess Maxima, heir ascendant to the Dutch throne? She is a major supporter of micro-loan programs in Southeastern Asia. I am wondering if Sri Lankans and Indians could produce the substance privately by growing subsidized coconuts. I have begun contacting environmental groups. The closer we get to figuring out if my friend's plantation can engage feasibly the more doors I plan to give a knock.

Input is still welcome!