2 Ways to Improve Sustainability in your Salon
As a hair color management software, it’s important that we educate hairstylists and salon owners to properly charge for their products used. But it’s equally as important that we educate our salons on practices to reduce the environmental impact of our industry.
Quite often we hear “but where is the accountability to our environment”. SalonScale was designed to support salons to reach financial sustainability. But we also coach our salons on practices that support mindful consumption of color products, whether that be mixing color or ordering inventory for the back bar.
First, let’s define what sustainability means. As it can be looked at in two different ways:
- the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.
- avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance
So when making goals to be sustainable not only are you keeping yourself, your team, and your business accountable to the wellbeing of our planet. But you also want to hold yourself accountable for reaching financial sustainability (aka the wellbeing of your business). We’re going to go over two areas in your salon that can help you to be more financially and environmentally sustainable.
Over Mixing Color
It’s no secret that hair color is made up of thousands of chemicals. Every day, approximately 42,000 lbs of hair color is poured down the drain and contaminate our waterways and soil. There are a couple of options when it comes to preventing excess color from going down the drain. One, scrape that excess color into a Green Circle bin. And two, only mix what you need.
It’s important to be mindful of what products you are using, but it’s equally important to be mindful of how much you are pouring. Yes, it can be a time-saver to just pour more now, but ultimately it comes down to our habits and mindset. Being able to track the actual amount of color you need wilwill help prevent over-pouring in the future.
As consumers, we have this internal need for urgency – whether that be to provide or to be fulfilled. Slowing down can actually reduce our “footprint”. We always say that an extra 30 seconds can save you thousands of dollars… and we can prove it. But slowing down and taking your time allows you to make fewer mistakes and plan out how to be efficient.
Being mindful of how much you or your team is pourin not only saves money, but it also helps reduce the amount of color going down the drain.
Over Stocking Color
It’s critical that we acknowledge how ordering our products, and how the process of getting color from the manufacturers into our back bars impacts our environment.
It’s normal to give yourself a peace of mind by ordering more, and have a bit of everything is helping you in the long run, but it can actually be hurting your business. Approximately 40% of inventory in the back bar goes unused. Your unused color reaches its shelf-life, becomes expired, and then goes in the garbage. Money spent over ordering could be better used elsewhere.
By implementing a hair color management software that tracks actual product used, you’re able to base all future orders on what color is actually used in your salon. No more guessing, no more overstocking the color products you don’t normally use.
