Green Salon Collective

Oh how I wish my hair was as blonde as my boys!

Having given up highlighting my hair 3 years ago due to the environmental impact of the chemicals and foils, I was delighted to discover that there is an organisation that is actively helping salons to become more sustainable. It is called the Green Salon Collective https://www.greensaloncollective.com/

They not only offer a service for the hard to recycle items that salons produce, such as used foils, excess colour/bleach chemicals and towels etc. But you can even send in hair to be used to soak up oil spills at sea. The service does involve a small cost but the idea is that customers volunteer to pay a small Green Fee of say £1-£2 to cover this.

Personally, I would be more than happy to pay this if I knew that it would help my local salon run more sustainably. So I have sent the details to all of my local salons and when I recently had my haircut I even plucked up the courage to ask them if they knew about it and they were actually really enthusiastic and interested in the initiative.

Even now after nearly three years of talking to people about sustainability I still get really nervous when initiating such conversations, however I haven’t ever yet needed to be as I have always found people to be receptive to my questions and ideas. So the next time that you are having your hair done perhaps ask them the simple question as to if they do any recycling in the salon and have they heard of the Green Salon Collective? Or if you don’t want to ask in person you can always simply send them a quick email with a link to the website to ask them if it is something that they would consider.

For me personally, I am still going to be sticking to my natural hair colour as reducing the demand for unsustainable products is always going to be better that recycling. I will just have to rely on the lemon juice to lighten my locks!

PS. My son’s 10 inches of lockdown hair (pictured) was far too lovely for soaking up oil spills and so we sent it off to the Little Princess Trust to be made into a wig for someone else to enjoy.