Salon joins program to reduce its waste
Apothecary Hair Lounge joins program to reduce its waste
LIMERICK » Apothecary Hair Lounge has joined a recycling and sustainability initiative that builds on the owner’s personal commitments and is working to significantly reduce the beauty industry’s environmental impact.
Owner Erin Tobin’s salon at 316 W. Ridge Pike in Limerick is one of the 1,500 salons across the U.S. and Canada that are Green Circle Certified salons.
Tobin’s salon officially joined the program in May, and since then has been recycling what had previously been considered trash — including all hair clippings, extensions, left over color and developer, papers, plastics, foils, aerosol cans and color tubes.
Tobin said she found out about the program from one of her product representatives, who thought she might be interested.
“I sat down, and looked the information over and was really interested, because for me I felt like it was an immediate fit for
what we already were doing,” Tobin said.
By recycling the additional materials, Apothecary Hair Lounge can reduce the amount of waste created by the salon by as much as 95 percent.
So what, exactly is a Green Circle Certified Salon?
According to the organization’s website, salons produce difficult-to-manage waste and have high water consumption, high energy usage, and release chemical by-product down the drain.
Hair salons across North America typically dispose of 421,206 pounds of waste each day — including hair clippings, hair color, foil and color tubes, and other items.
As a certified salon, Apothecary Hair Lounge now collects all of those items, which are sent to the organization for recycling and repurposing.
Among the items that can be made from hair clippings — hair booms for use in oil spills. According to Green Circle’s website, human hair has the same adsorbent properties as an animal’s fur or feathers and is effective at removing oil from water. The organization donates the booms.
Apothecary Hair Lounge opened in October 2016. Tobin said she knew as soon as she came up with the name, what her brand would be. Tobin said she wanted to create something special, where the stylists were educated and knew a lot about the industry and the products they were using.
“I wanted to provide products that were safe — not just for the environment, but free from animal testing and safe to use on people and for us. We’re touching them day in and
day out. It’s important,” she said.
Tobin said she put a lot of focus on what products to carry, and what services to provide.
“I am not willing to compromise my brand,” Tobin added.
She also has a credit card machine that can email receipts and uses a digital record keeper instead of keeping client color records on cards.
“It seemed to be a good fit,” Tobin said of her involvement with Green Circle.
The salon now features several containers for collecting the items to be recycled by Green Circle: broken tools and other items, latex gloves, hair, hair color containers and hair color.
“They’ll separate it. Only two percent is chemicals and the rest is water. So they take all the water out and filter the water,” she added.
Tobin said Green Circle Salons provides the Apothecary Hair Lounge with a big box they use to ship what they collect.
“Inside are the bags that we put inside the containers, and which are partially made out of biodegradable plastic made from hair that has been recycled,’ she said.
Once the containers are filled, Tobin notifies Green Circle, packs up the box to be picked up by FedEx, which delivers a new box of materials to begin the collection process again.
“It has taken a while to get acclimated. But now — we hold each other accountable,” she said.
Tobin said her clients seem to like what the salon is doing.
“We talk about it during the service, and we talk about it with excitement. We’re excited about it and we want them to understand why,” she said. “They’ll come back in and say, ‘I’m ready to donate to
“We talk about it during the service, and we talk about it with excitement. We’re excited about it and we want them to understand why.”
— Erin Tobin, owner, Apothecary Hair Lounge
the oil spills.’”
And she added that clients can bring in their reusable bag or empty product bottles to be recycled and receive product discounts in return.
There were some upfront costs for Tobin to join the Green Circle program, and there is a $2 charge per service which helps to pay for the implementation of the program.
Tobin added that 50 cents of that amount goes into an account that she can use to make eco-friendly improvements to the salon. For example, she will be adding water conserving shampoo hoses in December.
The salon opened with a staff of three, but has since expanded to a total of seven employees. Tobin has 17 years of experience in the industry. Blaine Rodenbaugh, the salon’s director of education, and Alyssa Raymond, salon experience director, have been at Apothecary Hair Lounge since day one.
For more information about Apothecary Hair Lounge visit www.apothecaryhair.com
For more information about Green Circle Salons visit www.greencirclesalons.ca.