Running your business in a planet-friendly way is a top priority in this eco-conscious era. The sad fact is that hair and beauty salons are some of the worst culprits when it comes to waste.
While many salon owners are taking small steps towards sustainability, clients are increasingly expecting to see a far more ethical approach from the businesses where they shop and spend their cash. Recycling has sometimes been seen as too expensive, inconvenient and time-consuming but the reality is that the issue is no longer whether you can afford to do it and instead whether you can afford not to.
What can YOU do?
Thankfully, there are more companies and schemes emerging to find convenient solutions for salon waste. Founder of Salon Sustainability, JC Aucamp, salon owner and award-winning colourist was struck by the amount of waste his own salon was creating and decided something had to be done.
Teaming up with his twin brother Jacus Aucamp – already a recycling, packaging and logistics expert, the pair started looking into ways to overcome this growing crisis. Today, Salon Sustainability gives everyone from freelancers to small salons and nationwide chains all the support they need to make a real and lasting change in their environmental impact.
“Salon Sustainability is a scheme that allows you to easily recycle an amazing 95 per cent of salon waste,” JC explains. “Whether on a continuous basis or a bespoke package, we can ensure that your plastics, paper, colour tubes, foil and metal styling cans are all responsibly recovered and recycled.” It collects full return boxes twice a week and ships orders out in two to three days, which means that waste never builds up around the salon. Bonus.
Solutions with a conscience
Showing more than just a concern for the planet, Salon Sustainability works with charitable partner The Enham Trust too. This social enterprise and leading disability charity supports disabled people across the south of the UK to live the lives they choose by providing training and employment opportunities. Its logistics team is on hand packing and dispatching all bins, return boxes and salon orders. All salon recycling waste is collected and sent to its warehouse where it gets checked, sorted and processed, ready to be recycled.
Rehash your trash
Want to know how your waste can make a difference? This should help you think differently before you bin it…
PLASTIC
Plastic is one of the biggest scourges on the planet. On an annual basis, we discard enough to circle the earth four times. Salon Sustainability is working towards ‘closed loop’ systems where waste does a full circle without having a negative impact on the environment. In the meantime, plastics from around the salon get turned into pellets to manufacture recycled alternatives.
FOIL
Did you know that foils can take up to 400 years to break down and only one per cent of salon foil currently gets recycled. Think of all the colour services in your salon alone and you can see why this is such a big problem. Salon Sustainability can take your used foils (yes, even the dirty ones) and re-process them to create new foil, cans and wrappings.
CHEMICALS
An increasing appetite for colour services means that salons are responsible for releasing all kinds of toxic waste into the environment. With chemical recycling, all the water content – which could be up to 90 per cent – gets removed from colours and peroxides and the rest gets recycled or incinerated as part of a clean energy initiative.
PAPER
Salons are no different to any other business in the amount of unnecessary paper and cardboard they may be binning, but it is one of the easiest resources to recycle. All cardboard and paper provided to Salon Sustainability gets processed to remove the ink and is then re-purposed as pulp to make more eco-friendly recycled paper goods.
TOWELS
Many salons switched to disposable options for drying hair during the pandemic but as much as it’s helped from a hygiene point of view, it’s become an extra burden on waste. Salon Sustainability has responded to this problem and salons can now send back their towels from brands such as Scrummi, Easydry and Enki to be turned into compost.
HAIR
Seems obvious, but have you stopped to think about how much actual hair your salon is throwing in the bin? Now, Salon Sustainability is taking hair clippings and turning them into Hair Booms, which can clear up chemical and oil spills in our waters. Not only that, but there will soon be a way to turn hair into compost to help grow food and be part of organic fertilisers for surfaces such as sports pitches.
Want to find out how to make your salon more sustainable? Contact Salon Sustainability via the website Recycling | Salon Sustainability | Hythe
Recycling | Salon Sustainability | Hythe
At Salon Sustainability we are passionate about what we do and to play our part in creating a cleaner environment and enabling others in our industry to do the same. Become a sustainable salon today and start recycling.
or email the team at info@salonsustainability.club.
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