Salons produce tons of waste every year – from foil to color tubes and even hair, the amount of waste heading to the landfill is hard to reconcile. For JC Aucamp, salon owner and founder of Salon Sustainability, this information was the wake-up call that something needed to change.
Hungry for Change
“Being a salon owner, I became more and more aware of waste – and as a very busy salon, the amount of non-biodegradable foil we were throwing away was too much for me to bear,“ said JC. When he shared his frustrations with his twin brother Jacus, they realized that 95% of the waste produced could actually be recycled – and in 2020, Salon Sustainability was born.
Getting the Entire Team On Board
The path to sustainability isn’t always easy. Just like all good things, it can be a bit of work. The key, says JC, is to ensure your team is 100% behind your decision. When he introduced the concept for Salon Sustainability to his own team, it was a 6-month trial period, and an opportunity to iron out any issues and fine-tune the journey for prospective subscribers.
The trial was so successful that today, they recycle 95% of their salon waste, and over 150 salons have joined Salon Sustainability – and this is just the beginning. “The feeling you get that you are doing something proactively to protect our planet outweighs the challenges,” says JC.
How Salon Sustainability Works
Salon Sustainability enables salons to recycle all sorts of salon waste- aluminium foils, color tubes, hair, plastic, chemicals, disposable towels, nail foils wraps, nail files, paper and beauty waste. They even run a PPE Recovery program.
Customers install individual bins in their salons and are encouraged to sort by waste type. Once full, the bins are emptied into return boxes (which themselves are made predominantly from recycled fibers ), and picked up by eco-start delivery vans.
In a busy salon, cross-contamination is inevitable, so once picked up all waste is sorted and cleaned by waste type and then delivered to specialist recyclers.
Not only can you feel good about doing your part for the environment, Salon Sustainability customers are also supporting charities by recycling. Salons orders are received, packed and dispatched by Ehham 3PL, a charity that provides life skill jobs for people with disabilities and provides support to over 8000 disabled clients. Once all of the salon’s waste is received, it is checked, sorted, and bailed in the Salon Sustainability warehouses and sent for recycling to their specialist recyclers to be made into new products again. 100% of the profit from selling on waste for recycling is donated to the Hair and Beauty Benevolent charity.
Sustainability is a Journey
Each step towards greener practices is a step in the right direction. “We encourage salons to make more environmentally conscious decisions by using salon software like Vish to reduce color wastage, only buying recyclable products, finding plastic alternatives, and changing to salon refill stations to reduce plastic waste,” says JC. “Together as an industry, we can create a better future for our planet.“
