A New Twist on Salonvironment’s Recycling Pop-Up Program
Pop-up event at 86 Plastic Zero Waste Shop, August 2022
During the time of May 2022 - January 2023, Salonvironment was graciously hosted by numerous businesses to help partially solve a problem in the local salons - the waste problem.
Salons create 877 pounds of waste a minute, a figure that most people in the beauty industry have seen from the trailblazer themself, Green Circle Salons. While Green Circle Salons started the conversation and has been making huge moves in getting salons to recycle 95% of their waste, it can unfortunately be financially unattainable to do so.
Thankfully, a ton of salon waste items are usually easy to dispose of locally (if the programs are available in the area). I am fortunate to live in an area that did have a lot of these programs available, plus the knowledge to know where to go and how to take advantage of these systems. As most people are not aware of how to do so plus the lack of education, I figured I could help in a few different ways.
If I offered a free recycling drop off program as well as educational resources, it would help salons and beauty professionals:
Rid of their waste in a responsible way
Understand how to recycle efficiently
Learn more about how to do it personally
How to talk about the difficulty of current recycling options
Our original acceptance list.
We had a full list of items that were easy for me to dispose of. We were successful in taking at least 200 pounds of waste to the local recycling center, scrap metal yard, and specialty recycling center.
During this original run, I was fortunate enough as well to be hosted by some amazing friends like Walking Lightly, 86 Plastic, City of Royal Oak, BYOC Co., and Salon + CO (plus offered by many other amazing friends but unfortunately didn’t have the time to spare).
Because of how this program was originally run, it was time consuming and I was rapidly running out of space in my garage (hard plastic and cardboard are usually the culprits in this).
As much as we love running this program, we decided to officially take a step back and reevaluate how to make the best use of our time with the most impact. Our education has been taking off more, there’s more accessibility for curated sources for beauty professionals, and (thankfully) more federal and state funding for waste disposal.
That being said, when we network at different events, we believe in always being a personal resource for beauty professionals in any way we can. At every event attend - we have been collecting some of the smaller, harder to recycle objects (and will continue to do so).
Our new acceptance list:
Broken Hot Tools
Gently Used Hot Tools
Unused/Expired Beauty Products
Empty Aerosols
Broken hot tools will be taken to the scrap metal yard.
Gently used hot tools and the beauty products will be donated to shelters.
Empty aerosols will be recycled with a company that accepts them.
If you want Salonvironment to table at any event (or just have us present) we'd love to collect these items for your event for your guests.
Our new twist on our recycling pop-up model, contact us at hannah@salonvironment.com!