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Founded by environmental experts, hairdressers & eco campaigners, GREEN SALON COLLECTIVE is the original authority on salon sustainability throughout the UK and Ireland wide.

Our vision is to facilitate salon sustainability by recycling the unrecyclable. Our profits raised from the sale of all commodities get redistributed and recycled too by supporting charities & local communities, as well as aiding all salons on their own journey towards a greener future.

Hair

How to recycle hair 

We all know that if hair is long enough we can donate it for wigs, but what about the 99.9% of hair that isn’t long enough?

There are many ways to recycle hair including, hair booms, hair mats, gardening and composting.

Hair booms & mats?

We all know that hair absorbs oil, we’ve all had oily hair at some point. It was this simple idea that led to the concept of Hair booms & hair mats.

It was an American hairdresser back in 1989 named Phil McCroy who came up with the idea of using hair to stop the spread of oil in the sea.

Essentially, a hair boom is hair cuttings of any length or colour tightly packed into cotton or nylon tubes.

These booms, when placed in either water or on the shores of beaches will stop the oil from spreading, saving wildlife and the natural landscape. 

We will also be getting the machinery to make hair mats. Hair mats can be used in a similar way to the booms, they can be used on land, parks, gardens and even your street or driveway. Hair mats can be used for oil or water and there have already been great results seen when used by plumbers, mechanics, and in local parks.

Who in the UK & Ireland are using hair booms?

That’s where we come in. Green Salon Collective is the first provider and manufacture of hair booms & mats in the UK & Ireland.

Hair for Gardening & Composting?

One of the first things we learn about hair is that it is a protein and like other proteins, it will breakdown when composted. So throwing away hair is like throwing away food! We will be giving hair that doesn’t make it to a boom or a mat to many farmers and gardeners.

It’s an age-old question. Can used hairdressing foil be recycled? With Green Salon Collective the answer is, HELL YEAH, it can!

However, you may get a different story from your local council…

Research from Eco Hair & Beauty shows that UK hairdressers recycle a frightening/shocking/pathetic 1% of their foil.

It’s not just used foil, it’s all salon metals that are being sent to landfill. Your hairspray cans and many styling products are likely to be made from metal, colour tubes are metal and even the can of pop you had at lunch should be recycled too.

A major issue for many council collections is that your foils are too dirty and contaminated, but for us, the dirtier the better as every foil with excess colour on it is colour that is not going down the sink or being sent to landfill. So give us your dirtiest foil!

Profits

100% of any profits raised from metal recyling will go to charity.