The GREEN FILES

These salons all chose a sustainable path because they believed it was the right thing to do for the planet and their business – but there ended up being some surprising costsaving side effects too…

We get that great big sustainability overhauls are a hard sell in April 2025. Everyone is focused on profitability and, we get it, sustainability might not be front of mind. But what if we told you that these green tweaks could save you money long term? Well don’t just take our word for it, listen to the salons that have benefitted in more ways than one from making sustainable changes.

Name: Oliver Blackaby
Salon: The Hair Salon
Where: Brighton

Can you save money by being sustainable?

We are resourceful when it comes to our recycling and use a few different companies to keep costs low. I found a local company that recycles cosmetic plastics, and we’ve really created a buzz by encouraging clients to bring in their old products for us to recycle. This even extends to hairdryers and electricals, as I will take them to a local place to ensure they are disposed of correctly. For salon waste though, it’s more cost-effective to use Recycle My Salon.

What sustainable products do you rate?

I wanted only vegan brands, so we have Oway but recently added Davroe. They are one of the OGs - all their bottles are made up of 100% PCR plastic and are all recyclable. We buy the 325ml size, so it’s economical and more sustainable for clients. We’ve also been using Yuv Beauty for two months, and we’ve noticed a drop in colour and packaging waste.

What about your furniture?

We have reclaimed Takara Belmont chairs which we know we can go to the brand to for replacing parts or reupholstering if needed. My mum is an interior designer, so she loves picking up gems at antiques fairs for us.

Name: Aaron Firmstone
Salon: CRAFT
Where: Tring, Hertfordshire

Can you save money by being sustainable?

We bought items based on their sustainability credentials first and foremost. But one major cost-saver has been our cork flooring. It’s carbon neutral and the company claimed it would reduce energy consumption by 40%. And, so far, our heating bills are a lot less than we anticipated. (I estimated bills would be £400 a month, but the highest bill we had in winter was £250!) Compared to polished concrete, which we loved the look of, cork bounces as you walk on it, so it’s better for joints than hard concrete. This flooring not only keeps our heating bill down, but I know in the long run it will keep our staff physically healthy too. We also used chalk paint, which removes impurities from the air – so it’s great for people with allergies - and removes moisture from the environment, so reduces damp. We don’t need a dehumidifier and the chance of us needing to repaint, is less.

What about furniture?

We bought our Takara Belmont styling chairs second-hand from a local salon group who were consolidating. They really are the ultimate in luxury. I’ve replaced the supporting bases for each of the chairs and when I contacted the brand, they could not have been more supportive. Our basins and backwash chairs are new, again from Takara Belmont. We know these will last and we won’t have to replace them every couple of years.

What sustainable products do you rate?

Bumble and bumble. Its factories are powered by solar and wind energy, the products are made from sustainable ingredients, which are 97% naturally derived, and its packaging is made from a minimum of 70% PCR plastics.

How do you recycle waste?

Our council is supportive of recycling our cardboard and plastics. Then we use Green Salon Collective for hair, foil and our Scrummi towels.

Name: Kasey Perks
Salon: Create
Where: Cardiff, Wales

Can you save money by being sustainable?

If you're thinking of making sustainable switches, you have to think of the long term, not the short-term gain. There is a financial outlay to start with, which myself and Create founder Dani found when we opened. My top tip is to check with your local council, as some will give grants to businesses who are becoming more sustainable. When we designed the salon, we used sustainable materials – our side boards are made from old scaffolding boards, our LED lightbulbs are energy efficient and we offer a refill service for clients. Buying backwash sizes for refills makes it cheaper for both parties – and more sustainable. Always think about attracting clients, if you’re the only sustainable salon in your area you are opening yourself up to a wider clientele. Our clients have often googled ‘sustainable salon’, so make sure your website's SEO includes that.

How do you get rid of your waste?

We use Full Circle Salon Recycling, it’s worth checking for local schemes.

What sustainable products do you rate?

We’ve used Elgon for four years, and really noticed a positive change. For example, they use labels that are made from plastic waste and debris collected from coastlines, which would probably have ended up in the sea. There’s a lot of misconceptions about packaging. For example, although glass is widely recycled, the weight of it means it uses more CO2 to transport, and the temperatures of the kilns where it’s created also increases CO2 emissions.

Name: Ken Eastwood
Salon: Kennady’s
Where: Essex

What was the start of your sustainability journey?

I was first inspired by a speaker at a L’Oréal Portfolio business event. She was from the organic chocolate brand Green & Blacks and asked – what are you doing to help your industry? After this, we started saving our aluminium tint tubes in the salon and taking them to the recycling centre, which we exchanged for cash. We then gave this to the Hair & Beauty charity. A friend of mine was running an education company, and got those salons to bring their tint tubes too. We raised about £1000 all in all.

Can you save money by being sustainable?

Changing to LED lighting is an easy action to make. When we did it in 2018 our energy bill went down to a third from what it was with halogen. I changed 250 lights and we saved two thirds on our electricity bill in the first year - it went down to £3000 from £9000.

What sustainable schemes do you rate?

Over the years we’ve worked with L’Oréal piloting sustainability initiatives and now we’re proud pioneers of its Hairstylists for the Future programme. In the salon we run an activation called WWW – reminding our team to think about waste, wattage and water. We try to make it fun, as well as educational. Our team know where to put the waste, to turn off hot tools and we use watersaving shower heads which saves a lot of hot water.

We ran a test on the old taps vs the new taps, and we saved litres of water in minutes!

Name: Rob White
Salon: Nashwhite
Where: Warwick

Have you always been sustainable?

That depends on the definition. For us it’s more than environmental, it’s the way we run our business and the impact we have on local society, the brands we work with such as Davines and Itzi and the people we employ. We’ve always had an eye on that, which is why we went through the B-Corp process because it aligned with how we want to do business.

Have you made sustainable savings?

After covid we switched to disposable towels but we ran through 5000 towels each month, so we moved to Itzi reusable towels and that has been a cost saving for us. A small salon would find disposable towels financially beneficial but for us as a larger business it wasn’t sustainable. We also used to use a salon recycling company but for a business our size we found it was unsustainable from a cost perspective (although it may be right for smaller businesses). We reached out to the local recycling centre and they now take our foil away at no extra cost. Vish have also reduced our product waste and the waste going into the drainage system - we have an average saving of £1200 a month - and that’s on waste alone!

Do you have tips for getting started?

Don't be deterred by thinking about every tiny detail, just try and be a little bit better each day. What worked for us was looking at the local community (allotments can reuse hair!) and the relationships we could build. As long as you have a sustainable mindset and do your own research, no matter the size of your business the community will guide you.

Name: Lisa Phillips
Salon: Ora Hair
Where: Banstead

Have you always been sustainable?

Personally, I’ve always been conscious about sustainability and mindfulness however nine months after opening my business my Mum was diagnosed with Parkinsons and I started studying the impact of toxins and what they are doing to our planet. The biggest thing that drove me was the impact of all those things on my team. I wanted to make sure we were doing everything to protect them and to have the least amount of impact.

Have you made sustainable savings?

My biggest passion is explaining to salon owners that you make more money by being sustainable. It’s about running an efficient business, so if you are implementing a system into the salon that costs money that needs to be charged for. We educate our clients about what we do and they have the peace of mind that the service is doing good. We use the money to invest in things like EasyDry towels. This helps the salon run efficiently, so by not washing towels all the time the apprentice is able to do more in the salon and you can charge more for your services. A lot of people are fearful of sustainability, they’re scared to ask their clients for the extra money but if they educate the client that it’s about being kinder to the planet, the team and their hair, then the clients love it.

Do you have tips for getting started?

I can’t believe salons in this day and age are still using towels. That is a no brainer. I cannot imagine having to wash every day, it’s not efficient, it’s not hygienic for the client. It’s so much nicer to have compostable capes and biodegradable towels – we use EasyDry and it’s a really easy change. It costs me £1.20 extra for a colour and cut for biodegradable towels and compostable gowns. Some changes require time such as moving to new products or implementing systems, but I think once you start running a business with kindness you start to see the changes.

Name: Hannah Cowell
Salon: Butchers
Where: Nationwide

Can you save money by being sustainable?

For us sustainability has always been at the heart of our business – and it’s not about the money saving aspect, it’s about doing the right thing for the planet. But we feel that our sustainability credentials are what attracts clients to us, so if you’re looking at it from that angle that’s a huge profit boost. New clients will search ‘sustainable salons’ and there we are on Google. We talk about sustainability through our marketing channels, social platforms and website. People engage with our sustainability practices too and I often feel like a stuck record talking about it, but I love it. We get our hair dryers repaired rather than buying new ones, which is cheaper and more sustainable. I made it my mission to find out how to fix our Parlux - I just contacted their warranty people and they will replace the broken section or fit a new part. You pay a small fee; for us it was around £30.

What sustainable products and partners do you work with?

We use B Corp-certified Aveda, we talk about the environmental benefits as much as possible, for example the packaging is made from post-consumer recycled packaging. For extensions we use Great Lengths, who are also B Corp certified, and we give them the hair back for them to recycle. If suitable we donate the hair to the Little Princess Trust who make wigs for children with cancer. We also partner with Green Salon Collective and we recycle cut hair through them. Clients are so curious about it. Initially, hair was used to make boons to soak up oil spills, but now they have over 10 different ways to re-use it. We love using it as fertiliser in our salon plants, it breaks down nitrates in the soil.

What are your tips for people looking to get started?

We use Ecoheads at the basin and this reduces our water bill. For our electricity we use Eco-tricity, who are the UK’s greenest energy provider - they offer 100% green electricity. We use a lot of energy as an industry so it’s important to us to use them. We do charge an optional green fee of £2 and that enables us to recycle through Green Salon Collective. Without adding a green fee, it wouldn’t be a financially viable service for us to offer and we educate our clients to understand this. We now use Vish colour management. We can ensure that we are charging our clients correctly, as well as not putting colour literally down the drain. We’ve only been using it for a month, so the results will inform whether we need to put our prices up across the board.

Name: Melanie Tudor
Salon: En Route Hair and Beauty
Where: Wakefield

“When we started our sustainability journey, we looked at all our suppliers and questioned their policies on palm oil use, ingredient sourcing, and recyclable packaging. Authentic Beauty Concept was the clear choice, and we have received incredible support as we moved to introduce green practices in our salon. Using good quality products free from nasties and containing ethically sourced ingredients is the first step in elevating sustainability across services. All Authentic Beauty Concept products are PETA-certified and vegan, with formulations free from silicones, sulphate sur factants, parabens, artificial colourants and mineral oils. The packaging is made from 80% Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) plastic in a soft-touch yet premium finish and beautiful colours that give the products a luxe look. We love the look of them in the salon and the clients love it in their bathrooms too!”

SUSTAINABLE STARS

1 ESLA ITALY CALMING SCALP ELIXIR

GREEN POINTS: Selected active ingredients are always in high functional percentages and tested rigorously, whilst maintaining the highest sustainability standards.

2 EVO TOP DROP

GREEN POINTS: Most professional treatments are typically made from plastic too small to be recycled, but evo uses glass bottles with aluminium lids that can be infinitely recycled.

3 KMS MOIST REPAIR

GREEN POINTS: Containing upcycled prickly pear, this leave-in conditioner is PETA approved, vegan and helps reduce water consumption.

4 JOICO INNERJOI SHAMPOO AND CONDITIONER

GREEN POINTS: Bottles are made using 95% Social Plastic*, from Plastic Bank, which collects ocean-bound plastic. The recycled plastic is then reborn and used in products and packaging.

5 PAUL MITCHELL TEA TREE SCALP WELLNESS SERUMS

GREEN POINTS: Enriched with botanicalrich, high-quality ingredients, the three serums in this range are packaged in recyclable glass bottles with FSC-certified cartons.

6 REVLON PROFESSIONAL EKSPERIENCE CONSCIOUS CURLS NOURISHING GENTLE CLEANSER

GREEN POINTS: All EKSperience products have been ecoconceived – bottles are made of 80% post-recycled plastic, 100% are vegan and 80% of natural origin ingredients.

7 SHEDID & PARRISH AFRO BUTTER

GREEN POINTS: Sustainability is a big focus for Shedid & Parrish, from working with an all-female co-operative for their shea butter, to being proudly plastic free and cruelty-free.

8 ALFAPARF SEMI DI LINO STYLE&CARE GLOSSY POMADE

GREEN POINTS: The Semi di Lino Style&Care range contains vegan formulas, and the plastic packaging is made from recycled and recyclable materials.

9 INNERSENSE ORGANIC BEAUTY REFILL POUCHES

GREEN POINTS: Over the past year, Innersense has introduced five new refill pouches, which use 70% less plastic compared to traditional 295ml bottles.