Salon sustainability: Hair cutting being used to contain oil spills
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Green Salon Collective (GSC) has signed an agreement with 550 salons in the UK and Ireland to contribute to salon sustainability
To make sure nothing goes to waste, a group has started using hair cuttings from salons to mop oil spills, dyes and hair bleach from lakes and oceans in the UK.
Green Salon Collective (GSC) has signed an agreement with 550 salons in the UK and Ireland to contribute to salon sustainability.
"Hair salons are one of the biggest contributors to waste on the high street," said GSC co-founder Paul Seaward. "We were shocked to see how far behind the UK is with salon sustainability, this was long overdue."
The group collects hair cuttings from different salons and then makes cotton and nylon tubes out of that hair, called 'hair blooms'. These tubes are then placed on the shores of beaches and help stop the oil spills from spreading.
In the last 10 months, the group has collected 500 kg of hair and 50 kg out of it has been used for cleanup operations. The rest will also be sent to farmers who will use it in compost to utilise the protein and nitrogen in it to enrich plants.
Hairdressing foils are also being recycled as only one per cent of foils were being recycled till now. Within the first few months, 2.2 tonnes of foil have been recycled.
"Every salon should be joining, we have to take responsibility for our own waste. This is just the start of something huge," Karine Jackson, a salon owner urged others to join in.