Green Salon Collective on the problem with waste
By Green Salon Collective | 25 April 2022 | Expert Advice, Feature, Sustainability & the environment
Green Salon Collective was founded in 2020 by environmental experts, campaigners and beauty professionals, with an aim to help member salons in the UK and Ireland to responsibly dispose of their waste. They kick off their blog with Scratch by detailing why non-recyclable and non-reusable waste is so problematic.
The design (or lack of) of things may automatically render them non-recyclable. Think about things like mixed material products or packaging that cannot be easily separated or dismantled into their component parts. Contamination may also render these things non-recyclable. Think about chemicals from foils leaching onto plastics or cheese grease onto pizza boxes.
Those plastics or those boxes typically cannot be recycled by local authorities or even some specialist recyclers. The result is that many of these things must be thrown away and often this means being sent to landfill.
Though an island nation, the UK does not always burn its rubbish. According to government statistical records on waste, 24.4% (52.3 million tonnes) of rubbish produced in the UK in 2016 was disposed of at landfill sites compared to just 2.7% (5.7 million tonnes) incinerated that year. The percentage of waste being converted into energy is increasing, however perhaps too much is still being sent to landfill sites which take a painfully long time to restore.
Fun (but not so fun) fact: The rubbish the UK sends to landfill each year could fill Wembley Stadium to the brim over 50 times.
With so many citizens living just a few miles from these dumping grounds (over three quarters of the population of England and Wales does) it is no longer a case of just throwing something ‘away’. And when those things are toxic like chemicals from our industry or Covid-infected PPE it matters just a little more what happens to our waste. This is really an issue that affects us directly.
Green Salon Collective has compiled a number of solutions to help your salon minimise its waste and we also offer some services to help you with responsible disposal. These include…
- Recycling, recovery and composting solutions – from paper, plastic and metal to towels and chemicals.
- Educating members with up-to-date and verifiable information and research related to all things sustainability.
- Offsetting salon carbon emissions in projects around the world.
Click on the following links to visit Green Salon Collective’s website, Facebook and Instagram accounts.