How One Hair Salon Is Cleaning Up Its Carbon Footprint

Hollywood'S version of the beauty salon is well documented, but the reality comes at a cost, adding to an already overflowing waste stream. Millions of pounds of hair, foil, plastic and metals head out the back doors of salons and into landfills every year. But now many are joining a movement to get that material, recycled and reused, helping the look and feel of both their loyal customers and the planet, whether it's a hair salon in brooklyn, new york or one in the atlanta suburbs. The scene is certainly familiar: color cuts and blowouts, but what's beautiful for the individual is not for the environment? I think that a lot of clients don't realize how much waste a salon produces. 10 000 pounds of oils a day are going into our landfill. Every little bit of leftover, color jennifer barber is general brand manager for the southern based bob steel salons, which in the last year became certified sustainable, meaning they recycle 95 percent of their waste. We felt it was the right thing to do to support our community and be a leader and make sure that we're doing what's right to lower our carbon footprint, something that has resonated with customers like lauren ramsey. Does it matter to you that to know that the salon recycles all that it does? Absolutely i've been a customer here for about 15 years, so it's one of the best things about this place. I think every company should make efforts to be environmentally friendly and green. I think that's just the way the world is, this day the bob steel salons aren't recycling on their own they're, a part of the green circle, salons a collaborative formed to make recycling as easy and affordable as possible for individual shops. This is where most of our recycling happens. You can see these are the green circle boxes that we have here. Do you think you could do this if you were just doing it on your own? No not too not after learning how they do it and the amount of recycling that we're doing. I can say at least at one of our smallest salons, i'm doing a box every other day where i'm filling it and able to ship it off. I mean our large salon in atlanta that has 34 chairs we're producing. You know five boxes a week or more in recycling all coming here, so we're at the green circle salons illinois facility - and this is where we receive all of the waste from salons across the united states. Shane price is the founder and ceo kind of see the bales of foil right there. The idea for green circle was sparked when the entrepreneur and outdoorsman was looking for his next project needing a haircut and stepped into a salon. For the very first time i randomly kind of picked the salon i went to the salon i sat down and - and i had this moment of surprise and shock - to see the amount of garbage that was building up in the salon and just simply being thrown out Sent to landfill, and so as we dug into the issue, we came to realize that this wasn't an isolated case in my salon right, but in fact it's a situation, that's endemic to the salon industry and the numbers were staggering. Every single minute salons are throwing about 877 pounds of waste into landfill every minute. Every minute. That'S about half a million pounds a day and what's shocking about that is 95 of that is recyclable. It can go back into circulation and back into our economy and create value. It'S a message and a mission which price has been sharing ever since we've built a wastewater community of salon, professionals who have shared and helped us to shape and build this program so that it works inside this industry. Simple, as let's find a recycling plant, that will do this for us, oh for sure, for sure find the first salon for sure it was two feet in a heartbeat knocking on doors. Getting told to you know just leave this along where you we don't take solicitors, yeah and me kind of pushing through a little bit and saying: listen, i'm not here to sell you anything, i'm here to pick up your hair clippings and your foils thinking. Yes, i was throwing the waste in my car in the back of my car for sure and taking it to the recycling company. I think at one time yeah we stored the hair clippings in a barn in the early days. It'S coming a blob of oil, possibly 2 million gallons creeping to shore, threatening to become america's worst environmental disaster in 2010. Green circle was able to get those hair clippings down to the gulf of mexico to aid in the bp oil spill. Cleanup publicity from that would help launch the business in the u.s. Now 13 years after its founding, there are about 4 000 green circle affiliated salons across the u.s and canada. So this is recycled, plastic and recycled hair. That'S been combined to form a new type of bio-composite material. This is the hair fiber right here, but the company's growth has gone beyond its salon partners and into the sustainability sphere. We'Ve explored different possibilities with hair right now. We'Ve made a biocomposite material working alongside virginia tech. This brings recycle plastics and recycled hair together to make this new formulation and we're able to make these recycling bins that go back into salons. In addition to that, we have worked and are working with a research group in california to understand how we can turn hair into a keratin soup into an amino acid soup and use these amino acids. As a biostimulant for agricultural purposes, price says it's a necessary shift in our collective thinking to see all waste as a resource, so whether it's mass or capes gowns. All of this is just plastic that can be shredded and can be re-pelletized into pellets, plastic, beads and then turned into new ppe and new products that you know we need to use so hair chemical dies. I didn't even know that could be recycled all right. So we work with our partners to separate these chemicals, a water layer and an oil layer. Okay, the water layer can be neutralized into salt and water and go right back into the wastewater grid safely. The oil layer is refined a little bit and actually fuel the system that powers this process to happen at the plant and, while green circle works to reduce the eco footprint of salons, its own impression has expanded, including beauty brands like l'oreal and redkin in the mission And each one of these brands has their own initiative some of them we plant trees with some of them. We do work with ocean plastic and getting ocean plastic out of the oceans when we bring all of these sort of stakeholders together again the salon owners or the spa owners, their staff, the manufacturers of the products, it's only together that we could build the right solutions That addresses everybody's needs and, at the same time dramatically reduces the impact of the planet. Thank god. You needed a haircut that day. Thank god. I needed a haircut that day, yeah and i know a lot of people are warning. So what does it cost me? Because if i'm going to go to one of these salons, so here's what's interesting, bob steel salons, we went to they're, not passing cost along to their customer. They obviously have to pay green circle. But what i was told is it ends up being about two dollars. A client is is what that would cost which, if you're, going and spending 200 already to get your hair colored whatever it may be, it's a very minimal cost if it's passed on, but obviously the impact is huge. They are actually recycling. Also, they say they recycle 95 of the material. They are b corp and zero waste certified, which means an independent group has gone through and made sure they're actually recycling the things they say that they are recycling, yeah accountability, if yeah, if we don't pay the cost. Now we're going to end up paying it later yeah. Look. He told me that there are thousands of landfills that will be at capacity by 2035. If we don't take care of them, see good things happen, conversations in salons and barber shops. That'S true, always