What is Green Beauty?
Welcome to the Aspiring Stylists Podcast with Tracey Franklin. Where to begin, grow and aspire to become the best stylist you can be.Whether you're thinking about becoming a stylist opening a salon, or developing your skills as an experienced stylist the next step of your beauty career starts here. Each week we'll discuss strategic ways to design, plan and execute on becoming a stylist that excels behind the chair and above the bottom line. Here's your host, Tracey Franklin.
Salons send over 877 pounds of waste to landfills every minute. This statistic absolutely blew my mind. As I became more aware of our environment and our need to protect it, I started digging, I started looking for more information on how to be as conscious as I could be how to, you know, just lessen my footprint a little bit. I always loved the outdoors, I respected nature, I did my part, I did the bare minimum, you know, like I didn't litter and I recycled cans and bottles and things like that. But I wouldn't have called myself passionate, like truly passionate about the environment and my effect on it personally until a couple things happened.
And one of those things was hiring one of my salon coordinators, Laura, she came to me with just this huge appetite for what can we do you know, how can we make a difference. And I had just not really been exposed to somebody this passionate before and it had a huge effect on me. Just her take on it is so contagious. You know, when you find somebody that is this careful in this caring, it's hard not to follow suit, it's hard not to be inspired by that.
So she's had a huge impact on me personally, and our salon and of course every one that's part of our team. And the other one is definitely when we partnered with Aveda. Aveda has always been an industry leader in sustainable beauty. And so partnering with them just opened my eyes even more to how important it is to make a difference in this area. My journey as a company has definitely evolved. You know, we've always been on the lookout for, you know, new green initiatives, what can we do to go one step further. One year, we went to serious business, which is an incredible business conference for salon owners specifically to have it in New Orleans every year, we've been going for about five years. Now, of course, with the exception of 2020, where nothing happened.
But every year we go and we connect with people who are just on the cutting edge of what's new, and how our industry continues to evolve. And I will tell you that these green salon initiatives are becoming more and more popular. And our access to the things that we can do is becoming more and more broad. So while I was there at this conference, I met one of the green circle reps and all and I'll get more into that as we go on. But I will say this was definitely a pivotal moment for us as a company. Another thing I learned along the way was from my coach, Coach Jill, if you've listened to our previous podcast, you know she's been a guest. And she has a ton of really great information to impart. She introduced me to a company called dovish, which is a really sophisticated way that we weigh our color and manage our color waist. So again, I'll go more into these in a few minutes. But I just wanted to touch on those. It's been so amazing to see our team and our clients participate as we grow in this area. And as we initiate this sort of behavior in the salon. Now they're on board and they're asking questions about how they can make a difference.
And they're so supportive inside of the salon, even down to what receptacle does this plastic go into, you know, they want to do the right thing. And it's so cool to see. And it also helps them level up and create their own personal practices. And when we brought the Aspire dream to life, it just totally made sense as a brand to just follow suit with all the practices that we had already put into place at the salon. So what kind of waste and damage is going on within the salons and the beauty industry in general. You know, we perform so many services in the salon every day and in the spa. Each of those services bury in the amount of waste that they create. But in times past we were taking several bags of garbage to the dumpster every single day. Again, 877 pounds per minute. We're talking foils, empty color tubes and product bottles, pedicure slippers and so much more. Every single thing that we can't reuse is basically garbage. It's basically waste.
Unused color just isn't money down the drain. It's also literally going down the drain and back into our waterways. So we're able to send our unused color to green circle, and they can process it into a renewable energy source, which I think is so stinking cool. You know, every year, millions of pounds of hair end up in our landfills.
And as they sit in these plastic bags, it begins to break down and produce something called methane, which is a really powerful greenhouse gas. What green circle does is they create these hair booms, which are used to clean up oil spills in the ocean. And they can also take this air and process it with recycled bottles to create this really cool new type of plastic material. We even received hair combs and new receptacles for our recyclable items made out of this material. It's always a really cool talking point in the salon when we get to share like, Hey, I don't know if you know this or not. But this comb is actually made out of a product that is created with hair from the salons and recycled plastic and it just blows their mind. I mean, it blows my mind too. And then we have these receptacles all throughout the salon. And of course, they're labeled about how they're made. And it just sparks a lot of interesting conversation. I'd like to discuss how stylists and salon owners can make a difference in promoting sustainability and why working at a salon with goals to protect the environment is so important. You know, the role of a salon owner is definitely an important one, we set the stage we set the standard. But even if that isn't happening in the salon that you work out, you can definitely still take personal responsibility. Even if it's only recycling your own waste, I mean, every little bit helps and talking about it with your co workers and your clients may create a spark and turn into so much more you just never know.
You can definitely find out what sort of green resources you have available in your own backyard.
You know, there are so many companies out there that have more responsible ways of disposing of your waste than just taking it to the dumpster or to the city dump. If you live in a larger city, you probably have so many options to choose from if you just do a little bit of research. Partnering with Aveda was one of the easiest business decisions I've literally ever made their commitment to sustainable beauty is incredible. But having all natural vegan, never tested on animals, plant derived products in a post consumer recycled packaging with that delicious aroma that the entire room is filled with is definitely something to be proud of. And it definitely was the easiest thing I've ever done for my company.
But let's not pretend that results don't matter. And you have to find a brand that speaks to you, you have to find one that aligns more with your personal mission. And although I'm partial to a beta, I know that there are a lot of companies out there that are stepping up and joining the mission and I am totally here for it. My clients know how important green beauty is to me because I talk about it like a lot. It's up to us to set an example we are influencers we may not be the Kardashians, but trust me, we are influencing people every single day behind the chair. Our clients look to us for what's happening in the hair and beauty world. So we definitely need to make sure that the message that we're sending is one that we're proud of, and one that represents our values. So I want to share some of my tips for choosing sustainable products and practices. Some of the small yet very effective things that we've done to reduce waste in the salon and at the school are to go back to regular coffee cups, we actually serve a lot of coffee and our salon, I don't really know what the draw is, I don't know if it's because people are relaxed if they're enjoying themselves, or if they're just real coffee lovers, but we have these little cappuccino cups and everybody absolutely loves them. So we're serving an immense amount of coffee every single day in our salon. And when we were looking at ourselves as an entire company, we realized that that was a lot of what was filling our bags every single day. So just going back to a regular coffee mug, although it's a little bit more work on the back end having to you know clean up and everything. It does allow us to eliminate that waste from everyday life. Another one was to put hand towels in our bathrooms instead of paper towels. Another very small change but it adds like I think a little bit more luxury to trying your hands off. And I also think it is another huge contributor to the waste that we were seeing in the salon I mean the paper towels, we were taking out that small Trash Can you know in the bathroom that receptacle at least twice a day.
So it really was quite a bit of waste. And I think the handhelds have definitely helped with that. And lastly, we put in a water cooler again a really small step but now we are eliminating all those water bottles that we used to hand out at the salon that never felt good you know to just hand somebody a bottle of water they take a few sips out of it. Then you've got to pour it out and Throw the plastic, you know, in the container. So now we're able to encourage our staff and our guests to bring their refillable cups to their appointments. And they can have as much cold water as they like. So what kind of resources are available? How can we further learn and further take action? Well, most everything I discover about business and how to position my companies best and align with my values, is that continuing education events, I talk about this every single episode. So surprise, I'm talking about education again. But you know, you got to make sure that you're connecting with other industry professionals. It's not just about what you learn, it's about what you learn from each other.
All of the learning does not take place on stage or in the classroom. Sometimes you cross paths with someone that just has an immense amount of information that you're looking for. And I find that people are more than happy to share it. We don't have to figure it out on our own.
There is definitely support out there. So make sure that you're having open discussions, roundtables and brainstorming sessions with your team. You know, my team brings immense value to the table. They have the best ideas and they have a voice and it deserves to be heard. Students and stylist if working in a green salon is important to you, or you just want to know more about what you can do to help and I encourage you to visit green circle salons.com They have a full list of participating salons and spas that you can reach out to. And they have a wonderful list of ways that you can get involved in a green initiative in your area. Waist is never pretty but we can all do our part to keep beauty beautiful.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Aspiring Stylist Podcast with Tracey Franklin. If you enjoyed listening and you want to hear more, make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcast,Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts. The Aspiring Stylist Podcast with Tracey Franklin is a Morgan Franklin Production. Today's episode was written and produced by Morgan Franklin editing and post production by Mike Franklin.Want to find out more about Tracey and the Aspiring Barber and Beauty Academy go to aspirebarberandbeauty.com
