St. John's salon recycles much of its waste

Urban Salon in St. John's Newfoundland Canada is helping to keep waste out of the local landfill by recycling different wastes it produces including human hair and tinfoil.

Salon produced a full garbage bag plus of waste each day

The salon used to produce more than a full garbage bag of trash daily including tinfoil, human hair and various hair products according to owner Paul Bateman.

Bateman started thinking about how much waste his business was producing and decided to do something about it.

Bateman said: For a small business it just seemed ridiculous, and the garbage bags were always really light because they were just filled with tinfoil and hair. Right now we've cut down on the weekly waste in the salon by about 80 per cent."

Green Circle Salons

To cut down on all his trash Batemen signed Urban Salon up for a program Green Circle Salons whose website can be found here.

Bateman has bins for different materials placed around the salon, including one for hair, another for unused hair dye, one for tinfoil, and another for plastic such as plastic shampoo bottles. A video showing the bins is appended.

Salons that are part of the Green Circle program are throughout Canada and the US. In St. John's alone there are 7 salons he is aware of that are part of the program. The population of the metro area of St. John's is just about 200,000 with the city itself around 110,000.

Bateman charges customers a dollar surcharge for each hour of service to pay for the program. Customers apparently do not complain of the charge.

Waste materials are recycled

The cycling of the plastic and chemicals is conventional.

Green Circle is able to send hair off to be used for such purposes as artificial bedding for animals displaced by the wildfires near Fort MacMurray Alberta, mattresses and even for soaking up oil spills.

When the bins are full the waste is put in bags and sent to Green Circle.

Staff becoming more aware of waste they produce

Bateman claims his staff are now more aware of how much waste they are producing.

Bateman said: "We're keeping 11 pounds of tinfoil out of the landfill just at this salon alone, per week."

Green CIrcle has its own Facebook page.

Green Circle claims that it is helping salons take the lead in reducing their carbon footprint. It claims that their program can divert 70 to 90 percent of waste the salons produce from going to the landfill. Their hope is to make the salons and spas that are part of the program 100 percent sustainable by 2020.