This is NOT from ‘The Onion‘.
– Japanese firm orders 2,700 staff to get the same ‘energy saving’ haircut… so they don’t have to spend as long blow-drying (Daily Mail, August 28, 2011)
A Japanese company has ordered all 2,700 of its employees to get identical hairstyles – to help save energy.
Tokyo-based Maeda Corporation announced the move as part of a national campaign to reduce energy consumption in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March.
Men are expected to sport a short back-and-sides, slightly longer on the top, while women have been asked to wear a ‘cute’ bob with a fringe that can be swept to one side.
Energy savers: Male Maeda Corp employees must wear their hair in a short back and sides, while female staff have been instructed to have theirs in a ‘cute’ bob
Chizuru Inoue, a spokesman for Maeda Corp, told the Daily Telegraph: ‘Our company is very keen on protecting the environment and we encourage our staff to adopt many environment-friendly actions,
‘We are not sure of the data yet, but we believe if people have short hair they do not need to use their hair driers for so long and they will use less water.
‘If all our staff do this, then it may save a lot of power.’
There is another advantage for employees of the construction firm, Ms Inoue added, as it is easter to make short hair neat again after staff have been wearing hard hats.
She said a lot of staff had been calling for information on where they can get their hair cut in the correct style.
Since the Fukushima Dai-Ichi was destroyed in the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March, the coutry’s government has asked its people to slash their energy consumption.
The disaster led to a review of the country’s energy policy that has left less than a quarter of its remaining nuclear plants still in use.
Without approval to restart reactors being taken down for maintenance, all of Japan’s reactors could be shut by next May, adding more than $30billion a year to the nation’s energy costs.