This Halloween, we’re not here to scare you with ghosts, ghouls or things that go bump in the night. The real horror story is much closer to home: what happens to your salon waste once it leaves the bin.

Spoiler alert: it’s not the happy ending we’d like to imagine.

The Landfill Lurking Beneath

When waste isn’t recycled properly, particularly hard to recycle items like salon waste, it’s often sent to landfill. Picture mountains of foil, tubes, plastics and hair buried deep underground. Instead of disappearing like a ghost, this waste lingers for centuries. The result? Greenhouse gases, toxic leachate and a haunting legacy for future generations.

The Incinerator’s Inferno

Not all waste ends up buried...some of it goes up in smoke. Incineration may sound like a neat solution, but it releases harmful emissions and destroys valuable resources that could have been recycled. It’s a fiery fate that turns reusable materials into nothing more than ash! This is only a good solution for waste like leftover colour where it can't be recycled or reused, to keep it from landfill. General Waste to Energy services are good for this.

Recycling: The Treat, Not the Trick

The good news is, we don’t have to accept this nightmare. By working with specialist recycling scheme Green Salon Collective, salons can ensure their hair, foil, colour tubes and other materials avoid these scary endings. Instead, they’re transformed into something useful, whether that’s compost, new aluminium products or hairy artwork!

Don’t Get Spooked: Take Action

This Halloween, let’s swap tricks for treats and give our salon waste a happier ending:

• Reduce what we use where possible.

• Reuse materials to extend their life.

• Recycle with trusted partners who make sure nothing creepy creeps back into landfill.

The scary truth? Without action, most salon waste is doomed to a gory grave in landfill or the incinerator’s flames. But with a few simple changes, we can turn that horror story into a sustainable fairytale.

After all waste doesn’t have to be frightening, if we deal with it properly 👻