Hairstyling program goes green

Did you know that Georgian’s Hairstyling program uses approximately 4,664 pounds of tinfoil each year? That’s the equivalent height to a 50-storey building!

When you consider the fact that just one Colour-and-Lighten Hair class uses about eight pounds of tinfoil and there are four of these classes per week, it’s not difficult to understand how fast that foil accumulates. Until recently, it was all going into the City of Barrie landfill, but Rena Lang, faculty member in the program, decided that should change.

She contacted Green Circle Salons, a company that provides the world’s first – and North America’s only – sustainable salon solution to recover and repurpose beauty waste. According to the company, its turnkey program allows salons to repurpose and recover up to 95 per cent of what was once considered waste, such as hair, leftover hair colour, colour tubes, aerosol cans, paper, plastics and of course, tinfoil.

As of this week, Georgian is now a member of Green Circle Salon and now has the ability to recycle all of its waste from the Hairstyling program and have it repurposed into useful materials. For example, aluminum will be used for bike parts, chemicals will be broken down to clean water and hair will be made into recyclable boxes.

We caught up with Rena to learn how Georgian got involved.

How did you hear about Green Circle Salon? One day in the salon I was thinking about how much foil gets put into our landfill and started to do some research. I called the recycling department for Barrie and found that they cannot take our foil as it has chemicals on it. I remembered a company I had heard of 10 years ago starting a recycling program for hair salons specifically. I searched salon waste and found the name of the company and remembered it was Green Circle. I called them up and set up a meeting with them to find out more about the company and becoming a partner.

Why is it a good fit for Georgian? At Georgian we pride ourselves on being sustainable. We are very involved in our community as well as being very environmentally friendly. Our students are aware of the crisis our planet is facing. Our students will be responsible for the separating of our waste to send to the green circle company. They all attended a tremendous presentation and training that Green Circle bought to the students in class. They also created an awards program that will benefit the students with each referral.

What did you do with all of the waste before Green Circle? Before we became a Green Circle Salon we recycled our plastic and cardboard. However, the rest of the waste was put in the garbage, which is a huge amount of even foil waste. That’s approximately 4,664 pounds of foil, and an untrackable amount of chemicals being washed down the drain.

How long did the process to become a Green Circle Salon take? Once I got approval from the college to move forward the Green Circle Salon was quick to make arrangements for the training.

How is this engaging our students? I think after the presentation Green Circle gave us, we were made aware of just how extreme this problem is. Knowing that there is an area of plastic three times the size of France floating in the ocean is an awakening. Last year, alone, we used more than one-and-a-half times the amount of resources that the earth can create. If we can all do a SMALL part to turn this around it will make a BIG impact.

Tell us a little bit about Georgian’s salon. Georgian Hair Studio is a learning lab for students, as well as an open salon for the public to book all hair appointments. With the supervision of instructors, hair services are offered at a discounted price. We advertise our client days on our Facebook page as well as the website.

Students get to experience a working salon with supervision, allowing them the opportunity to prepare for their work life once they graduate from the program.

The program is three semesters that run for a full calendar year. Second- and third-semester students participate in client days, as well as our apprenticeship program that runs two evenings a week.