On the TEDx Stage

Human Material Loop founder Zsofia Kollar took the stage at TEDxAmsterdam to share the story behind Human Material Loop and a question that started with an ordinary visit to a hair salon.

While sitting in a salon, Zsofia watched piles of freshly cut hair being swept from the floor and thrown into the bin. It raised a simple question: what can we do with all that hair?

That question became the beginning of Human Material Loop.

TEDxAmsterdam has been bringing ideas and speakers to Amsterdam since 2009, creating a platform for people challenging established ways of thinking. The 2023 edition, “Reality?”, invited speakers and audiences to question how our assumptions shape the way we understand the world.

For Zsofia, that meant questioning something most of us accept without thinking: why does hair become waste the moment it is cut?

Her TEDx talk explored how human hair could be reconsidered as a raw material and how changing our perception of waste could open new possibilities for the textile industry.

What began as a pile of hair on a salon floor became a mission to transform an overlooked biological resource into valuable materials.