Going green is in style at Fahrenheit Hair

At a women's corrections facility in British Columbia hundreds of recycled locks of hair, once adorning the heads of Yukoners, are being stuffed into old pantyhose and nylons.

They are being made into something called booms — devices used to soak up heavy oil from water whenever a large oil spill occurs.

The Yukon hair made its way to the Maple Ridge Corrections Facility thanks in part to Chantelle Tarapaski, the owner/operator of Fahrenheit Hair Studios in Whitehorse, as well as a company called Green Circle Salons.

Green Circle Salons is the world's first sustainable salon solution. They work to recover and re-purpose, what they call, beauty waste.

We are the only ones doing it in Whitehorse.- Chantelle Tarapaski, Owner, Fahrenheit Hair

The business runs across North America, collecting recyclables and hazardous waste and re-purposing them.

"We are the only ones doing it in Whitehorse," said Tarapaski. 

"So we send our foils, our hair clippings and any of our spa waste that are contaminates."

Those materials are collected at the salon in Whitehorse and are shipped Outside once a month.

Clients are charged a small eco-fee and that covers the shipping and Green Circle Salon's cost.

The hair booms are just one example of what typical hair salon waste can become thanks to Tarapaski's initiative.

Hair is considered one of the best materials for absorbing oil, so the booms are the perfect tool.    

Plus, they can be reused, up to ten times over.

Once the life of a boom is complete they are dropped into mushroom fields where the spores break them down into nothing.

Tarapaski went down to Vancouver to see the boom operation in action firsthand.

"I wanted to make sure I understood what was happening with these oil filled booms," said Tarapaski. "They literally disappear."  

On top of the hair getting a new life, all of the foils and metals shipped out by Fahrenheit are put into an incinerator.

The ash that is produced from the burning process is then used for street signs and automobile parts.

Getting your hair cut can be a waste

The business of hair is big. In Whitehorse alone there are more than a dozen salons and that means waste, lots of it.

"Every colour tube that we have comes in a box with its own piece of paper with instructions," said Tarapaski. "The tube is metal and the lid is plastic and most clients go through anywhere from one tube to eight tubes in a service."

On top of that, all of the shampoos, conditioners and other products are typically wrapped in plastic and shipped to Fahrenheit in cardboard boxes.

"Lots of aluminum, cotton swabs, lash solution, perm solution, the excess waste in the colour bowl...all of these things will either go down the sink or sit in the landfill."

Small but important step 

Tarapaski says making her salon more environmentally friendly took a bit of work, but not that much. She purchased extra recycling bins and just reorganized the salon to accommodate the ramped up recycling effort.

"It's quite easy now that we are in the swing of things but there definitely was a transition," said Tarapaski. "We accumulate a lot of material everyday so I live with a lot of recyclables in my office, but that just means more trips to the recycling depot."

By joining the network of Green Circle Salons, Fahrenheit Hair can divert around 70 to 90 per cent of what is usually sent to the landfill in a sustainable way.

"I think that it seems like a daunting task for most salon owners because they realize just how much work it does involve," said Tarapaski. "But it was a really positive change for us, I feel good about it, the team feels good about it and our clients feel good about it."

Tarapaski is hoping other Yukon salons go green as well. 

"When you really look into the facts it looks like a pretty gloomy future and I want to believe that if we make the changes...it has to start with us," said Tarapaski. "It's such a small amount of waste that we are diverting on a global scale but if everyone does it it will make a difference, hopefully."