Recycling almost EVERYTHING!

I’ll be honest. Growing up, I was heavily influenced by circles that were skeptical of the impact of recycling. Did it really end up where we thought it did? If everyone wasn’t doing it, did it really help? Is there something more tolerable than paper straws? (Yes! Metal straws!)

Glass Door Salon has resided in a beautiful corner of the Belfort shopping center for nine years. While we’ve never had a recycling service here, we do have a dumpster at the end of the parking lot that served as a daily memory-wipe regarding all things waste-related at the end of each day. Very “Men-in-Black.”

But something gave me pause last month.

I learned that the beauty industry in North America generates 877 pounds of waste EVERY minute of EVERY day (a painful image) and that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (twice the size of Texas) is out there, a floating island of microplastics and debris in the North Pacific Ocean (where plastic outweighs plankton six to one). With a little nudge from a truly zero-waste organization, Green Circle Salons, we began to develop some pretty cool, new recycling habits, appreciating their mission, that “beauty shouldn’t come at the planet’s expense.”

We held two salon meetings and spent two weeks asking our clients if they’d support new recycling efforts. Why ask? Well, recycling isn’t free. It’s like bringing another utility bill into the salon. But we found that a $1 or $2 Eco Fee would offset the new expense and help us to break even ($1 for cut appointments/max $2 on appointments that include chemicals). We were reassured in abundance by our guests that they’d be very pleased to know their beauty waste isn’t going to a landfill and that the small Eco Fees were not a concern. Never one to prefer “nickle and diming” people, I breathed a sigh of relief!

Not only do we now recycle the usual offenders (paper, plastic, metal), we recycle hair, leftover color chemicals, latex gloves (of which I’m horrified to witness the accumulation), chip bags, batteries, color boxes and bottles, color tubes, shampoo bottles, et cetera! In fact, it would be easier to list the two things that we don’t recycle: 1) food (because it attracts pests to the recycling facility) and 2) our bathroom trash (forgive me, but I have no desire to ask my staff to sort the contents of the bathroom waste bin – it’s just going to have to be trash).

We hope that like-minded members of our community can celebrate this little win with us! We are excited to take responsibility for our part!

Have any questions about this? Don’t hesitate to reach out!