Corner Brook hair salon keeps dye out of the dump
Largest salon in town is producing just 1 bag of garbage a week
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Plastic bottles for shampoo and conditioner are recycled. Foils, waxing strips, plastic packaging — all of it has a home. Hair stylists scrape gooey, leftover hair colouring into a plastic bucket instead of washing it down the drain. There's even a cardboard box next to the cash register where staff put all paper and receipts.
Thanks to these recycling initiatives, the largest hair and beauty salon in Corner Brook is diverting 95 per cent of its waste from landfills.
"It's really important to look around. These are bags of bleach and chemicals like acetone. Anybody knows that shouldn't be in our environment," said Chatters Corner Brook beauty consultant Melanie Wells.
Staff can really measure the scale of the waste reduction on collection days, Wells said, when large cardboard boxes jammed with materials are shipped to The Green Circle program which properly recycles and disposes the waste. In contrast, the salon sends only about a single bag of garbage to the dump each week.
No garbage to bring out
Chatters Hair Salon locations across Canada have partnered with Green Circle, and the store in Corner Brook joined in on the recycling efforts about eight months ago.
Through the program, typical salon waste is put to use, or recycled, in various ways. Hair cuttings are used to sop up oil spills, Wells said, and the leftover chemicals from hair colouring treatments are disposed of safely.
"It's really mind blowing," she said.
The Green Circle program was already in place when Wells began working at the salon.
"I just think, how many bags of garbage would I be bringing out? How many times would the dumpster need to be cleared?," she said.
"We don't have issues like that. I rarely bring the garbage out, because there is nothing to bring."
Ahead of the game
Although at least one other salon in the city also partners with Green Circle, Chatters' focus on recycling is not the norm in Corner Brook, where many businesses are not yet required to recycle curbside.
The new recycling program with Western Regional Waste Management launched its Sort It program in July, focusing on household curbside recycling in blue bags.
The service board plans to incorporate plastic and paper curbside recycling for businesses in 2019.
For now, customers at the Chatters location in Corner Brook are charged $2 on their salon bill to help cover the cost of shipping the materials out of province.
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