Haven is Sustainable, Carbon Neutral, and Eco-Concscious

Environmental conscientiousness and sustainability are some of our core values here at Haven and in our North York community. Little things such as using hand towels rather than paper towels, washable capes rather than disposable capes, or cloth bags rather than plastic bags reduce the amount of waste we produce. 

One of the important steps that we have taken was partnering with Green Circle Salons. We are proud to say that Haven is Certified Sustainable by Green Circle Salons!  Sustainability is important to us and we want to do our part in reducing our environmental footprint in order to extend the lifespan of our planet and better the world of tomorrow for future generations. Owner and one of the founders of Haven, Evan Ross, was awarded the “Recognition of Outstanding Environmental Leadership Award”  by Green Circle Salons.

Green Circle Salons and Haven

What is Green Circle Salons?

Green Circle Salons is a program dedicated to offsetting salon emissions and recovering up to 95% of their waste. They recover waste such as hair and foils, as well as excess colour and lightener. They partner with recycling facilities, chemical waste facilities, and clean energy producers to dispose of the waste in a climate-neutral manner. According to Green Circle, “the beauty industry sends 877 pounds of waste to the landfill every single minute”. They are the salon industry’s first sustainability solution and have been around for over 13 years. 

Founded in 2009, they’ve since become partners with major salon brands such as Kevin Murphy, Estée Lauder, and Aveda. In 2019 they became B Corp and Zero Waste to Landfill Certified, meeting the highest standards of social and environmental performance. They even created their own recycling bins used in the salon which are entirely made of recycled plastics and recovered hair.

How does it work?

Haven takes care to sort the waste of every service, including hair, foils, unused color product and bleach product, into individual bins. When the bins are full, we package and ship them to Green Circle. Green Circle then divides and ships the waste to the appropriate partner facility. From there, the waste is dealt with appropriately as follows:

Hair

You may be thinking, “but isn’t hair compostable?” It is! But it needs air and moisture to decompose, which it can’t do if it’s cooped up in a trash bag. Green Circle ships hair clippings to partner facilities, where it can be composted with other organic waste, turned into hair booms for oil spill cleanup, used in stormwater filtration, or used in the manufacturing of sustainable plastics.

haven_scissors

See how hair booms are used down below:

GC hair IG-1

Excess Color

Sometimes we accidentally over-mix lightener for a highlighting service, or have some color left over from a root retouch. It’s irresponsible to pour all of these harmful chemicals down a sink drain because it is possible for it to find its way back into our drinking water and soil! Instead, we collect the extra product in an enclosed safety bin and when the bin is full, we send it to Green Circle. They send it to facilities where it will be safely turned into clean water or separated into water and oil to be repurposed.

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GC hair colour IG-1

Metals

Think of the thick stack of foils you see on your stylist’s trolley during your balayage or highlight service. Imagine the pounds of weight of foil on your head after having a full head highlight service applied to your hair. That’s a lot of foil! After pulling them out of your hair, we collect the foil into a metal-specific bin. In this bin we also sort metal color tubes as well as empty aerosol cans. Green Circle sorts these metals and sends them to their partner facilities. The recyclability of aluminum helps save massive amounts of energy and resources compared to other non-recyclable materials. Recycling it saves 95% of the energy required to make new aluminum. They are then melted down and used in the construction of items like car parts and bikes. These materials can find themselves back on retail shelves within as little as 90 days!

Fun fact: did you know that aluminum can be infinitely recycled?

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GC metals IG-1

All services at Haven have a 1.5% environmental contribution added to help us continue to effectively and safely dispose of all waste generated by our services. Our Haven family thanks you for your support in this amazing effort!