Sustainability – Making an Impact in Your Salon

“Sustainability is becoming an even more significant conversation,” says Anil Salham, Owner of BLACC + BLOND. “Many businesses and salons are looking at ways they can become more environmentally friendly for the greater good.”

“Some salon owners they are unaware of some of the simple steps they can take towards sustainability,” continues Anil. “These small steps will greatly impact both the salon and the planet as a whole.

“When I decided to launch our campaign GREEN IS THE NEW BLACC last year, with the aim to become the most sustainable salon on the planet, I researched long and hard for three months of all the different ways, big and small that we could improve. If we were going to go sustainable, I wanted to set a new standard.

“Below are some of the first steps we took to becoming a sustainable salon. They have greatly impacted our BLACC + BLOND salon, our clients and the planet…

Sustainable steps

• Eco-friendly shower heads – by introducing eco-friendly shower heads into our salon, this has not only reduced water wastage by 65%, effectively conserving water which saves energy, but also it has helped emit cleaner, purer water for our client’s hair.

• Wonky fruit refreshments – we decided to change our refreshment offering and brought in sparkling water with wonky fruit and food that would have gone to wastage. Clients love the new offering that they can enjoy during their appointment and knowing that the refreshment helps to save food waste.

• Reduce & recycle – reducing and recycling is an easy first step salons can take to becoming more sustainable. By simply recycling things like glass, paper and plastic and having the correct bins to help you separate these items for recycling, you can reduce the amount of waste send to landfills and incinerators, conserve natural resources, prevent pollution and save energy to name a few things. At BLACC + BLOND we recycle wherever possible and also use refillable cleaning products to help reduce the use of single use plastic.

Biodegradable Equipment

• Go biodegradable. At BLACC + BLOND we use biodegradable PPE equipment including gowns and towels that are significantly better for the environment. As well as being better for the environment, clients love that they have their own gown. This will avoid any colour transfer onto their clothing. Salons owners have the convenience of a disposable product without the guilt about how it will affect the environment.

• Go paper free where possible – another simple step salons can take to becoming more sustainable, getting rid of paper. This includes paper price lists of which can be replaced by online price lists. This is also incredibly beneficial for clients. Nowadays they use online and social media more than ever to find the next salon to visit. By having this information easily available it can help with paper waste dumped into landfills. The impact on forests and climate change is reduced. It can also attract more clients to your salon and unnecessary costs for your salon too.

Climate Positive Workforce

“Now, at BLACC + BLOND our salon is a Climate Positive Workforce. I offset the carbon emissions of my staff and we donate 10% of new client services fee to OneTreePlanted to plant trees across the planet. We are constantly striving to do better and are now in the process of compiling a sustainability report, of which we are supremely confident that they will be able to officially be accredited as Carbon Neutral.

“The effects of us tackling the Art of Sustainability have had fantastic impacts for us. Clients love what we are doing and more are visiting us for our services, which we feel incredibly grateful for. By sharing what we have been doing on social media, we have had great PR and marketing coverage, and have had some fantastic interviews that have helped to spread the word on what we are doing in regards to sustainability further and have hopefully resonated with the community and other business and salons to make them want to do better too.

Making a better planet

“Most importantly, becoming sustainable has allowed us to do better and do our part in making the planet a better place. In one year, our goal was to plant 1,000 trees and in our first 10 months we helped to plant 3,000 trees, of which we are extremely proud of. We can’t wait to continue our sustainability journey and improve further and we hope that others will feel motivated to do the same!”

Photos by Tom Bird