A green movement to manage beauty salons’ wastes

Green Circle Salons, a Certified B Corporation that helps salons and spas across the U.S. and Canada reduce their environmental impact, has announced that it has reached a milestone with 16,000 + beauty professionals joining the movement. 

"With every new sustainable beauty professional who recycles their beauty waste, we are making a dent in the 877 pounds of waste created by the beauty industry every minute," said Shane Price, Founder and CEO of Green Circle Salons. "Our mission is to create a sustainable beauty industry by helping salons recover, repurpose, and recycle their beauty waste. Since we launched in 2009, our community of 'Waste Warriors' has kept over 10 million pounds of waste out of landfills and waterways. Together we are transforming the beauty industry and keeping our planet beautiful."

In 2023 alone, Green Circle Salons and its community of Waste Warriors kept 1,358,103 lbs of beauty waste out of landfills and waterways. The key is Green Circle Salons' Zero-Waste-to-Landfill certified process. Partnering businesses send approved beauty waste items to Green Circle Salons and Green Circle Salons recycles or repurposes all of it.   

"Green Circle's solution to our drive to be sustainable just made perfect sense for us. Our entire team and our clients absolutely love it." said Andrea Tucker, Green Circle Salon Waste Warrior from Studio: A Collective of Stylists. "We needed something that would make a significant change in our environmental impact, but was also easy to introduce into our salon. The process is as simple as having different containers to recycle things in like hair clippings, color by product and foils."

Up to 95% of all beauty waste created in salons can be recycled including hair clippings, used foils, excess color, aerosol cans and more. Hair clippings become bio-composite plastics, used foils turn into consumer products like bike frames, excess color is used as an alternative fuel-source to generate energy and so much more.

"Before we found Green Circle Salon, there was always something missing. We all had this feeling of 'we aren't doing enough,'" said Josie Gonzalez and Christina Herrera from Vibe Salon. "Now we have the ability to proactively decrease our carbon footprint and it's such a blessing for our team and our clients who love being a part of it. It's incredibly motivating to know we're doing good by the environment and our clients every day. We take a lot of pride in our roles as Waste Warriors and are fully behind Green Circle Salon's 'Better Beauty Now' movement. We all need to do more, and this movement has helped us become changemakers in the industry."

Green Circle Salons is launching a Better Beauty Now movement for its community of Waste Warriors and their clients to help spread the word. Together, beauty professionals and their clients can share their sustainable salon solutions the impact they're having on the industry and the environmental benefits. Anyone — from salon owners to salon clientele — can join by posting their sustainability journey with #BetterBeautyNow.