Green Salon Collective
Strands of Spalding is now part of a national scheme to help the planet with inventive ways to recycle salon waste. While working alongside other leading brands including Aveda, Gerrard, Environ and GHD, who are all, now becoming, more and more environmentally aware, we want to go one step further. Not only are the brands we use becoming Vegan, environmentally friendly, recyclable and cruelty free, we are now as a salon recycling more than half of our daily waste. Where does it all go, read on…
HAIR
We all know that if hair is long enough we can donate it for wigs. But what about the 99.9% of hair that isn’t long enough?
There are many ways to recycle hair including making hair booms and hair mats as well as using it for gardening and composting.
Hair booms and mats
It’s no secret that hair absorbs oil…we’ve all had oily hair at some point!
It was this simple idea that led to the concept of hair booms and hair mats. An American hairdresser back in 1989 named Phil McCroy came up with the idea of using hair to stop the spread of oil in the sea.
Essentially, a hair boom is hair cuttings of any length or colour tightly packed into cotton or nylon tubes. When placed in either water or on the shores of beaches, these booms will stop oil from spreading, saving wildlife and the natural landscape. Hair mats can be used in a similar way to the booms, they can be used on land, parks, gardens and even your street or driveway. Hair mats can be used for oil or water and there have already been great results seen when used by plumbers, mechanics, and in local parks.
Recent Oil Spill
A recent spill in 2021 came from farmland in Northern Ireland, red diesel oil was leaking into the sea. Unfortunately, the high tide took a lot of it away but many of the shoreline rocks had trapped the oil allowing time to get in and clean it up by placing about 30-45kgs of hair to help with the clean up.
METALS
It’s an age-old question: Can used hairdressing foil be recycled? With Green Salon Collective the answer is: HELL YA!
Research from Eco Hair & Beauty shows that UK hairdressers recycle a frightening/shocking/pathetic 1% of their foil.
ONE PERCENT! Well not any more.
ALL metals
It’s not just used foil, it’s all salon metals that are being sent to landfill. Your hairspray cans and many styling products are likely to be made from metal. Colour tubes are metal and even the can of pop you had at lunch should be recycled, too.
A major issue for many council collections is that our foils are too dirty and contaminated. They risk leaking onto other materials and could make EVERYTHING unfit for recycling!
But now, the dirtier the better, every foil with excess colour on it that we have used can now be collected. All foils straight out of the backwash can now stop being sent to landfill! The same applies to empty colour tubes making it as easy as possible to put straight in the recycling bins.
But my towels are ‘sustainable’
Well, sort of….Even when disposable towels are certified biodegradable or even compostable, it does NOT mean that this is what will happen to them in landfill. When you throw your used disposable towels away, they can sit buried in landfill for years and years and years.
Composting is useful and easy to set up in all gardens, only in the very smallest gardens will it be difficult to find space for a compost heap. HOWEVER if you use as many towels as us hairdressers do, you will soon run out of room, no matter how big your garden is!
Some councils offer green waste collections, unfortunately, they don’t take towels. The good news is Salon Collective does, so now we can add these to our list of recyclables.
The profits made from all these exciting ways of recycling, go to #haircuts4homeless & #foodcycle. The #greensaloncollective working with #mossyearth aim to plant 1 tree for every recycling bin purchased.
To learn more about the green salon collective go to www.greensaloncollective.com
For any enquiries please contact strands on 01775 768999
Or message/email us through Facebook/instagram
#greensaloncollective #generalwastetoenergy #waystorecyclehair #doingourbitfortheenviroment