US salon cutting waste by recycling hair products

United States – In the USA, large volumes of hair clippings and unused hair products end up in landfills and waterways – so a salon in Nashville, Tennessee, has decided to do something about it, according to a local media report.

‘It just goes along with what we believe in personally and what we do at home,’ says Lauren Gish, co-owner and stylist at Fruition Salon.

‘We have a bin for unused colour, a bin for hair and a bin for our foils. And we separate them and we send them to a warehouse in Chicago, and then they have a recycling facility that takes care of all those things for us.’

The Nashville initiative is being promoted by Green Circle Salons, a company from Canada that helps individual salons to ‘go green’.

According to Green Circle, partnering salons have recycled and repurposed more than 1000 tonnes of waste since 2009. Customers pay an extra US$ 2 eco-fee per hair service to help support the programme.

‘I think at first people can be a little grossed out,’ says Gish. ‘But I think that they think it’s really cool, especially once we explain to them how much more effective hair is and what science is coming up with for the fibres and how they can be recycled.’