Recycling in the Salon: First Steps
Aerosol Collection. Nov 2021
Recycling is a first step to many for understanding the big picture related to climate change. You coming to this article means you’re in the beauty industry looking to reduce your carbon impact on the planet and make a difference with your business (we love this for you)!
It can be overwhelming to get started, but it doesn’t have to be. These are some basic principles to keep it simple for anyone who wants to start reducing what goes into their trash bin.
It’s important to start small when you are getting into the habit of trying anything new. If you start with too big of a project, the likelihood of your expectations being met are slimmer. Decide on one or two things you want to recycle at first and build from there.
Decide on what you want to recycle. Do you want to recycle product bottles? Paper? Foil? Aerosols? Once you decide that, stick to it. Find out what products are the same materials you want to recycle. For example; hair foil and color tubes are both aluminum so you can recycle them together, most shampoo and conditioner bottles are made from #1 plastic and you can recycle those together, and so on and so forth.
Now look up if you can recycle those products in your area. It’s easy nowadays with the internet and search engines to find businesses or services in your area that will take your recycled materials (Earth911 is an easy website for that).
It’s important to double check that they accept your recyclables ahead of time to save you some effort in the future, it would be discouraging to collect items just to have to throw them away later. Most cities usually have recycling services for businesses that are great for basics like cardboard, glass, and #1/#2 plastic. Scrap metal businesses are great to recycle metals at.
Now that all the hard stuff is done, it’s time to collect! Keeping the recyclables in separate bins will make it more organized and you won’t have to worry about cross contamination. If you’re able to compact the materials and clean them, do so. For more ways to effectively recycle in your salon, you can read our detailed notes on how to here.
Hopefully these tips will help you out. We have more articles and guides on recycling to help you on your journey.
Good luck!