CUT hair gets recycled at the Shane Dias Hair salon in Claremont, with the plastic, metals, chemicals and paper sent off for reuse.
“The hair is the most impressive because it goes into 1m-long stockings that are used to soak up environmental oil spills,” salon owner Shane Dias said.
This month, Dias Hair joined the world-first Sustainable Salons social enterprise with 49 other hairdressers in Perth.
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READ NOW“Basically, the program takes 95 per cent of our salon’s waste and recycles and redistributes it,” Mr Dias said.
“We did it more for environmental reasons, because if hair salons can do it then most businesses can stop this waste.”
Sustainable Salons donates its proceeds to the Ozharvest and Kiwiharvest services that give meals to people in need in Australia and New Zealand.
At Dias Hair five bins are used to store the hair, plastic, metals, chemicals and paper for the fortnightly pickups.
Customers pay an extra $2 to ensure the waste created by their hair dye or styling is not tipped to landfill.
“The amount of plastics and metals surprised us initially and it’s made my staff and I more aware of how to minimise general waste too,” Mr Dias said.