Hooters Girls Donate Pantyhose to Oil Spill Cleanup

Hooters, a restaurant chain known more for its waitresses' outfits and hot wings than environmental efforts, is helping to clean up British Petroleum's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by donating used pantyhose.

The company's Project Pantyhose initiative will collect donated torn pantyhose from Hooters employees, with the goal of gathering more than 100,000 pairs.

The pantyhose will be used to make booms, which are filled with materials like hair, fur, feathers and fleece that absorb oil. 

If the donation drive hits its goal, the pantyhose will be able to make 15 miles of booms, enough to collect 1 million gallons of oil if they all are reused eight times, the average boom lifespan.

Hooters will collect the pantyhose over the coming four weeks and hand over all donations to Indigo Oceanic and Matter of Trust, which will make the booms.

Last month, Hanesbrands said it would donate 50,000 pairs of pantyhose to oil spill cleanup efforts. In addition to making booms stuffed with hair, Matter of Trust creates mats made with hair, which were used in the San Francisco Bay after the Cosco-Busan bunker oil spill in 2007.

_{Hooters waitresses - CC license by Flickr user SQL Samson}