GREEN CIRCLE SALON

As a member of Green Circle Salons, Epic Beauty Boutique is beginning a comprehensive recycling / reuse program that will help us to significantly reduce our environmental impact on the planet. The program helps us to redirect out of water streams and landfills everything once considered as garbage: hair (in 2010 Green Circle sent more than 1,000 pounds of hair to the Gulf of Mexico to help clean the BP oil spill), foils, colour tubes, paper, plastics, and liquid chemical waste (most salons today simply rinse all leftover liquid chemicals into the sink and down the drain).

With today’s age of GREEN & ECO-RESPONSIBILTY, the new buzz words in business are changing us for the better!  We are very excited to take our industry in a new direction with exceptional standards of environmental accountability.  The beauty industry poses many challenges to the environment, from sourcing of ingredients to disposal of packaging and products. Through our alignment with Green Circle Salons, we hope to ameliorate our ecological footprint by implementing simple green changes that will make both our salon, and our industry, more sustainable. We are proud of this new partnership and knowing that Green Circle Salons is 100% traceable and fully accountable for how they handle the materials we give them.

What does this mean for our customers?

• Easily and quickly identify green salon leaders through the GCS online Directory
• Today, consumers vote with their dollars. People make the choices for change. With the Green Circle platform, we empower green consumers with choices that support both environmental and social progress. We can now improve the beauty of our clients and the planet at the same time.
• Peace of mind knowing that their salon has taken meaningful steps to keep our communities healthy
• By supporting our salon, they contribute to local and international community development, as well as environmental research and innovation.

KEY QUESTIONS

Did you know that currently all aluminum foils and colour tubes are not being recycled and are sent to landfill?
Recycling aluminum uses roughly 5% of the energy required to create virgin aluminum from bauxite. Ninety- five percent of all aluminum can be recycled over and over again, including the foils and colour tubes that are used in salons across Canada.

From now, GCS Member Salons will take an environmentally responsible stand and ensure that all metals are properly recycled. This will help to reduce the need for more landfill space, reduce our dependence on non-renewable resources, and decrease the amount of toxins going into our landfill sites.

Did you know hair when placed in garbage bags will mummify, continue to fill our landfill, and give off methane gas?
GCS Member Salons will now be diverting all hair out of landfills and into other more sustainable projects. GCS, in connection with various partners, is looking at ways that hair can play an important role in a number of commercial applications. It’s exciting to know that hair can be used on our oceans to help in oil spill cleanup and recovery projects.

Did you know that all excess chemicals including colour, perm solutions and ammonia get rinsed down the sink into our water stream?
This is the ugly truth of the industry. Our solution will be to send all excess liquid chemical waste to a hazardous waste facility where it will be responsibly managed, so that it no longer pollutes our waterways or land.

ABOUT GREEN CIRCLE SALONS

Green Circle Salons is a company that provides a simple but powerful green strategy to help salons reduce their environmental footprint and get noticed by consumers looking for genuine green options.

We offer a proven pathway for salons to achieve success in the short term and be sustainable into the future. We believe that small steps to transform each salon, with the help of customers and employees, over time, will make that green conversion possible and sustainable. We offer an eco‐systems approach that looks at recycling, energy, lighting, water, cleaning products and the re‐purposing of hair‐ all parts of the salon experience. To do this, we have our own branded services, but also work with best‐of‐class green product and service suppliers.

We are also committed to giving back up to 5% of pre‐tax profits to work with local and international organizations to develop and support programs that make creative environmental impact and lessons for positive change.

Visit www.greencirclesalons.ca for more information.