How to reduce plastic consumption in your business

Creative HEAD’s Most Wanted Sustainability Heroes Anne Veck and Keith Mellen show us how to reduce plastic consumption in your business in the latest episode of their free Salon Re:Source guide

1. Avoid it…
Avoid products containing plastic micro beads and nurdles. Most manufacturers have phased these out but do check. Instead, choose products that are naked – ie, with no plastic packaging. For example, use soap rather than hand cleanser.

2. … Or ban it
Ban single-use plastic drinks bottles in your salon, and don’t serve drinks in single-use plastic cups. Offer filtered tap water instead, served in glasses. Replace any plastic bags for clients with biodegradable recycled plastic, paper, or reusable canvas. Even better, encourage clients to bring their own bags to re-use or.

3. Can’t avoid completely?
Choose products that are contained in recycled plastic – eg, Ecover cleaning products, who also do refills. If it has to be made of plastic, choose items made from recycled plastic – even furniture! Look up The Plastic Company and British Recycled Plastic.

4. Plastic-free tea
Did you know that some of the most popular tea bags are made of plastic and leak millions of plastic particles into our cups of tea? Check out a list of plastic-free tea bags here and in the meantime avoid tea bags that have strings attached to them with metal staples.

5. Re-fill and re-use
Sign up here to list your salon as a place offering free water refills to the public. This helps cut down on single-use plastic – and gets new people through your door!

Recycle packaging and other unused items – they can be re-purposed as decorations, pen holders, plant pots or to hold pins, etc. There are some great ideas here.

6. Glove up
Use bio-degradable nitrile gloves. Lots on the market, so go Google! Latex gloves are bio-degradable but latex can cause allergic reactions for some people. Vinyl is cheap but offers less protection against chemicals than nitrile and is manufactured using oil and degrades into micro-plastics. Not great!

Green Salon Collective do a 100 per cent plant-based, plastic-free, compostable glove that is great for colour application but can’t be used to take colour off as it’s loose-fitting and can let water in.

See Anne and Keith’s Sustainable Salon Toolkit in full here >