What started in 2009 as a local effort in Toronto to help salons recycle has blossomed into an award-winning program that now empowers salons across North America to recover and recycle up to 95% of their beauty waste. Today, Green Circle Salons is able to give a new life to previously unrecoverable materials and hard-to-recycle items such as hair clippings, foils, excess hair color, aerosol cans, color tubes, PPE, and more.
Did you know that 877 pounds of waste are generated every minute in salons across North America? That amount translates to over 421,000 pounds of useable materials needlessly heading into landfills every day.
While ensuring that their own efforts are green and sustainable, Green Circle’s goal is to help salons and spas go green. They strive to see these beauty businesses gain clients, save money, and build revenue in a way that’s both ethical and simple. For their efforts and dedication to their cause, Green Circle has been certified by B Corp and the Carbon Trust. These certifications acknowledge that the company meets both the highest standards of environmental and social responsibility and requirements for Zero Waste to Landfill.
As a certified Sustainable Salon, beauty professionals join over 16,000 Waste Warriors who are making a difference. By simply collecting their beauty waste and sending it to Green Circle Salons, they give it a new life!
- Plastics become new items like plant pots and shampoo bottles, cardboard is turned into new paper products or cellulose insulation, and metal is melted down into aluminum sheets and bars to produce products like cars and bicycles.
- Hair color is either turned into clean energy or separated into water and oil. The water is cleaned and returned into the water system while the oil is blended into fuel.
- Single-use items such as nail files, waxing strips, cotton swabs, and PPE are used in a waste-to-energy process to create clean, renewable energy with leftover ash used as a filler in asphalt and other construction materials, like brick.
Thanks to Green Circle Salons, 1,263,300 pounds of beauty waste was kept out of landfills and waterways in 2020!
“We’re proud to have over 16,000 Waste Warriors across North America who are making an impact – one box of beauty waste at a time. Together, we’re showing salon guests and our communities that we make beauty Beautiful.”
– Shane Price, Green Circle Salons Founder & CEO
PPE Waste Recovery Initiative
Since reopening after the COVID shutdowns, face masks, gloves, capes, towels, and face shields have become part of the salon and spa arsenal. These single-use PPE materials have created a pile of waste that is not recyclable and can contaminate the space.
To tackle the added waste, Green Circle Salons developed the PPE Recovery Initiative. A simple and affordable solution to a growing waste problem, this program empowers beauty businesses to responsibly recover this waste and give it a new life. The PPE Recovery Initiative keeps this waste separated and safely disposed of while allowing businesses to showcase their environmental leadership.
“When we started the Green Circle Salons movement over a decade ago, our mission was to offer North America-wide sustainability solutions for our industry by2020”, says Founder and CEO Shane Price. “I am proud to say that today we can support businesses in every zip and postal code to recover up to 95% of their beauty waste, and just as we reached this milestone a new challenge emerged. With the PPE Recovery Initiative, we can ensure that people are kept safe as they return to work without a single new item entering the landfill.”
The PPE Recovery Initiative is available to all beauty businesses – including salons, barbershops, manufacturers, distributors, and more in North America. Now beauty professionals and their clients can feel comfortable knowing that safety and environmental responsibility have been priorities at every stage in the supply chain.
In addition to offering affordable, safe disposal kits, the PPE Recovery Initiative contains education around offsetting financial costs related to PPE, and marketing support to communicate the environmental leadership of businesses that responsibly manage their waste.
“For the last decade, I’ve been part of the movement for sustainable beauty that Green Circle Salons has pioneered. With all the uncertainty around what the future of our industry looks like, it’s great to know that Green Circle Salons continues to innovate by giving us a complete solution to this massive new waste problem posed by single-use safety equipment.”
– Brian Phillips, worldSALON and WORLD Hair and Skin Owner
To learn more about the PPE Recovery Initiative, or to join the Green Circle Salons movement, please visit https://info.greencirclesalons.com/earth-month-rosy.
Rosy is proud to sponsor Green Circle Salons Earth Month campaign. By doing so, Rosy is helping to prevent 100,000 plastic bottles from entering the world’s oceans this April.
Green Circle Salons is also a member of Friends of Rosy – An industry network where our community helps support one another.
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