Environmental Awareness from a Hair Salons Perspective
We are a family owned Hair Salon name Filiz Hair Design located in Clarksville MD and we have been in business since 2009. Our aim is to be environmentally friendly, but what does that really mean? How can a hair salon become Eco-conscious; after all, we do use chemicals and foils and other materials that do not decompose and not everything we use can be recycled.
We came across this one video on YouTube that really opened our eyes.This video helped us become mindful of the amount waste we produced on a daily basis. It also helped us see that not everything we threw away was actually trash. The name of the video is You Can Live Without Producing Trash. Thus began our journey on becoming environmentally friendly.
Can you imagine what 450,000 pounds of waste looks like? That’s basically 225 tons of trash? What if I told you that the salon industry across North American produces about that number on a daily basis according to Green Circle salons . That means just over 164 million lbs of waste per year which is a lot. Here is what we did in order to become green. First we joined Green Circle Salons.
What is Green Circle Salon?
They recycle & repurpose hair, foils, colour-tubes, papers, plastics, and divert excess hair chemicals from being rinsed down the drain and so much more. They have amazing customer service and are very quick to respond. For anyone who owns or runs a salon I would recommend joining them. They can give you peace of mind knowing that you too will be supporting a vision of a sustainable salon industry by 2020.
Above is a photo of some left over color that we collected over a 4 week period. (This will be properly disposed of through Green Circle Salons). The following are just a few of the things that we used to throw away: hair clippings, foils, gloves, old brushes, broken combs, paper, plastic containers, empty aerosol cans, batteries, coloring tubes, food, packaging from vendors, advertising, old brochure and pamphlets and you can’t forget the chemicals which include but are not limited to: developers, hair dyes, color removers, left over perms bottles, left over keratin and so much more. We realized that we did not have a system to help us properly dispose of salon waste.
How we reduced our carbon footprint
The first thing we did was separate the waste. We put foils into its own bin, hair into another, same thing with gloves. We did research on what was recyclable and what wasn’t. We purchased a compost bin to dispose of organic matter like fruit, tissues and more. We also purchased a recycling bin to dispose of the plastic container bottles, paper, cardboard boxes and we received a color bin through our partnership with Green Circle to dispose of left over color.
Here is a list of the things that we have done to reduce our carbon footprint Maybe there is something in here that your salon do can too.
Using glass instead of plastic cups
Turning off lights when no one is in room
Unplugging things that are not being used
Going paperless with advertising
Using organically infused product lines
Using LED lights and replaced all lightbulbs and housing in salon
Automatic lighting for bathrooms
Recycling papers and packaging
Dividing our recyclables into composting and recycling
Avoid throwing chemical down the drain by wiping the bowls of access lightener, color or other chemicals into a specific hazardous waste container before washing
Ask vendors to reduce amount of packaging when they deliver products
Replace paper towels with microfiber towels for cleaning
Replace bathroom paper towels with hand dryer
Offering paper bags as oppose to plastic bags
Replacing disposable gloves with gloves that can be reused over and over again
Change shower heads to Eco heads to reduce amount of water being used (saves up to 56% more water)
Creating your own cleaning supplies for mirrors, counter-tops and windows
As a green circle certified salon, we aim to do our part alongside other certified salons across the US to reduce waste. All together Green Circle certified salons have been able to reduce 400,000 pounds of waste annually. Now if you compare that to the amount of waste we are producing on a daily basis we are just barely scratching the surface, but its a start! If you go to their website you will be amazed at what they do and how they do it.
