5 Things Worth the Money for Sustainable Salons
Making your salon more sustainable doesn't have to mean completely redesigning the business, replacing everything you own or spending a fortune on the latest "eco" products.
In fact, some of the best sustainable investments are surprisingly simple.
They're the things you buy once and use again and again, the swaps that reduce everyday waste, or the services that help you deal with unavoidable waste properly.
So, if you're deciding where your sustainability budget is actually worth spending, we'd start here.
1. Proper reusable crockery
We're talking mugs. Cups. Glasses. Plates. Actual teaspoons.
It might sound incredibly obvious, but disposable cups can quickly become a significant source of waste in a busy salon.
If you offer every client a tea or coffee, think about how many takeaway-style cups, lids and stirrers you could potentially get through over the course of a year.
A good set of reusable mugs and glasses is one of the simplest investments you can make.
Buy them once. Wash them. Use them again.
And from a client experience point of view, a proper coffee in a nice ceramic mug is always going to feel better than drinking it out of something designed to be thrown away ten minutes later.
Worth the money? Absolutely.
2. Salon plants
We love a salon plant.
Plants are a simple way to bring more nature into your space, soften your salon interior and create the kind of environment clients actually want to spend time in.
And unlike another decorative accessory that might eventually be replaced when trends change, look after your plants properly and they can stay with you for years.
You don't need to turn the salon into a rainforest either.
A few carefully chosen plants can completely change the feel of a reception area, styling station or window display.
If your salon doesn't get much natural light, look for hardy varieties suited to lower light conditions rather than buying something beautiful that will be dead within three weeks.
Because replacing a dead plant every month isn't particularly sustainable.
Worth the money? If you can keep them alive, yes. 🌱
3. Reusable gloves
Gloves are one of those everyday salon essentials that can create a surprising amount of waste.
Colour application, cleaning, treatments and other salon tasks can mean working through large quantities of disposable gloves.
Where appropriate for the task and permitted by the product manufacturer's instructions, switching to reusable professional gloves can significantly reduce the number of single use gloves your salon gets through.
Instead of automatically reaching for another disposable pair, a durable reusable option can be cleaned, cared for and used repeatedly.
But where reusable gloves are suitable, they're a great example of the principle:
Buy better. Use longer. Throw away less.
Our Green Libertines, En Route Hair, saved over 15,000 single-use gloves a year by switching to reusable gloves!
4. Hair and metal recycling
Some salon waste is unavoidable.
Hair is going to be cut.
Foils are going to be used.
Colour tubes are going to be emptied.
The question isn't always "How do we stop creating this waste?"
Sometimes it's:
"What can we do with it next?"
That's where specialist salon recycling comes in.
With Green Salon Collective, salons can separate materials such as cut hair, used hairdressing foils and colour tubes rather than automatically sending them to general waste.
Your aluminium can be recycled rather than treated as rubbish, while the hair swept from your salon floor can be put to use across 15+ different applications, from hair booms and mats for oil spill clean ups to composting, research, soil improvement and the development of new materials.
And there's another reason we think this one is worth the money.
Many Green Salon Collective salons introduce a small Green Fee to their services to help cover the cost of their sustainability initiatives.
That means doing the right thing with your salon waste doesn't necessarily have to become another expense for the business.
Worth the money? We might be slightly biased, but definitely. ♻️
5. Sustainable toilet roll
Yes. Toilet roll.
It's probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about creating a sustainable hair salon.
But that's exactly the point.
Sustainability isn't only about the big, visible changes your clients notice.
It's also about reviewing all of the boring everyday products your business continually buys, uses and replaces.
Traditional toilet paper can involve virgin fibres, plastic packaging and unnecessarily resource intensive production.
Look for toilet roll made using recycled or responsibly sourced fibres, preferably with minimal or plastic free packaging.
It isn't going to transform your salon's environmental impact on its own.
But neither is any single change.
When you start questioning dozens of everyday purchasing decisions across your business, the cumulative difference can become much more meaningful.
And you're going to buy toilet roll anyway.
You might as well buy a better one.
Sustainable salons don't need to buy everything labelled "sustainable"
Perhaps the most important thing on this list isn't something you can buy at all.
It's changing the way you think about purchasing.
Before buying something new for your salon, ask:
Do we actually need it?
Can we reuse something we already have?
Is there a reusable alternative?
How long will it last?
What happens to it when we're finished with it?
Sometimes the sustainable choice will cost more upfront but save money over time.
Sometimes it'll cost exactly the same.
And sometimes the most sustainable option is simply not buying something at all.
Start with the things you use every day
Creating a more sustainable salon doesn't happen through one enormous change.
It's hundreds of smaller decisions.
The cup you serve a coffee in.
The gloves you put on.
The toilet roll you order.
The plants you decorate with.
And what happens to the pile of hair and foils left behind when your last client walks out of the door.
Start there.
Because the things your salon uses every single day are often the things most worth changing.