Montreal salon rethinking how to recycle beauty materials — even hair

Aly Ana’s salon sends its hair clippings, used dye and foils, aerosol cans and empty shampoo containers to a program that can recycle beauty waste.

It’s a fresh style that’s trying to cut down on waste in salons.

As stylist Aly Ana carefully snips off the ends of her client’s locks, she says being able to recycle certain beauty materials gives her more peace of mind about her environmental impact.

“When I found out just how much beauty waste my industry creates just for the sake of vanity, it was really upsetting to me,” she told CTV News.

“Knowing that we can repurpose our waste is just leaves me with a better conscience.”

Ana’s salon, Revolution, in St-Henri sends its hair clippings, used dye and foils, aerosol cans and empty shampoo containers to Green Circle Salons, a North American program that is able to recycle beauty waste.

“There is 877 pounds of waste going into landfills and waterways from salons in Canada and the US every single minute,” says Green Circle’s Sarah Babington. “It’s an insane amount.”

Commonly when people think of hair recycling, they think of wigs, but donated hair for that purpose often has to meet certain criteria in terms of length and not having been dyed.

The hair Green Circle gets is often very short, but it can be used for a variety of purposes.

“In 2010 there was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and 1000 pounds of Green Circle hair was used to clean up some of that oil,” says Babington.

She also showed off a comb made of melted shampoo and conditioner bottles combined with hair clippings.

Even used dye and bleach can be recycled.

“We have a partner who can spin the material separating the water component from the oil component,” says Babington, “the water component would be purified and put back into the water system. The oil component would be used as recycled fuel for industrial machinery.”

Green Circle started in Canada in 2009 and has since expanded to the United States and Europe.

“From 2009 until today we’re almost at 13 million pounds (of waste) that has been processed,” says Babington.

In addition to hair products, it can also accept other salon waste like wax, wax strips, and gloves.

Ana says before joining the program, the waste they produced would be thrown away or washed down the drain.

“We didn’t know that beauty could be repurposed that way, especially the clippings because hair stays around for a long time.”

She points to three bins of waste, including hair, saying one of the biggest advantages is how convenient the pickup program is, “at the end of the day, you don’t want to think about how you’re going to repurpose your waste, right?”