Nicola Turner (Nic), founder and behaviour changer at Mainstream Green, is working on a waste minimisation project with Hamilton City Council that’s all about developing ambassadors within the local business community.

The project – Community Waste Ambassadors – is led by the council as part of its Waste Management and Minimisation Plan. Nic has been recruited to implement it, something she’s very excited about.

The ambassadors are businesses that are on a journey to reduce their waste and keen to help others learn by sharing their story.

The first business to jump on board was award-winning hair salon Zibido.

“It’s quite a cool story because you don’t really think of waste minimisation when it comes to hairdressing. And they’re doing some really cool things,” Nic said.

She said her work was all about waste minimisation and creating behaviour change. Nic likes to set up a two-sided conversation with businesses to help them reduce waste.

“It’s very much about sharing the journey and what people are learning, things that work and things that don’t. It’s about making an effort.

“And that’s what I love about [Zibido]. They are in an industry where it’s really easy to say, ‘oh that doesn’t apply to me’, but they’re going on the journey and figuring it out and there’s always easy wins.” 

Nic said they had other businesses from several different industries coming on board, but it was great to start with a business that most people perceive as an industry that couldn’t reduce its impact.

“If any businesses are wanting to get involved they can just get in contact with me. It’s about being keen and being willing.

“To me, it’s all about normalising waste minimisation,” she said.

 Zibido owner Shannon Dowd said she and her employees had started making small changes after a trip to Australia last year.

“We basically heard about it from Sustainable Salons over in Australia when we went to a hairdressing expo and we got back and we thought, what can we be doing?”

She said they’d found it difficult to begin with as it took a long time to be able to find a place that could provide recycling bins. 

Shannon said senior stylist Carew Paki decided to phone the Hamilton City Council and were told there was a grant they could apply for to help provide them with the appropriate recycling bins. When this came through they were lucky enough to grab two sets, one of which they are giving away to another salon that wants to get involved through the hairdressing association.

“We want to start letting younger hairdressers know how important it is to start getting sustainable, to make sure that hairdressing is going to be sustainable over the years,” Shannon said.

“We realised there is a lot of waste, a lot of stuff that can be reduced or recycled coming through our salon,” she said.

Since obtaining the bins, Shannon called in the help of Nic and together, over the past six weeks, they’ve made even more changes.

The salon has invested in a compost bin, gloves that break down over one year instead of 800 years, one of the girls is even using recyclable foils.

“They’re really cool, you just wash them out when you’re done. We also recycle any tin foil, tint tubes, aluminium cans and everything metal by taking it to Central Metals.”

Central Metals gives the salon money for their metal recyclables which Shannon said would be going to charity. 

Once all that was in place, the team wanted to figure out what to do with the copious amounts of hair they were throwing out every day.

“We heard about worm farms and one of our clients is using our hair now for her worms. That’s a thing. And you can compost hair, I give it to mum for her garden,” Shannon said.

She said there were lots of other small things they were doing including using drying balls in their drier as they had no where suitable to hang their towels. Using drying balls takes about 40 minutes off drying time. They have also abolished plastic bags, giving clients reusable retail bags instead. And their towels were now also biodegradable.

“When you look at the waste everywhere, and how our world’s doing… I’ve got two young kids and I want them to have a nice cleaner and greener environment, but I also just want the younger generation to start making a difference, and we need to lead that.

“I’m known in the Waikato as a hairdresser so me getting on board, I’ve got more chance to go out and talk to people about it. 

“It's normalising waste reduction and making it cool, showing that we can do it and getting our clients involved.”

Shannon said the salon’s waste had been reduced by about 95 per cent.

“I was surprised at how much we could actually reduce and recycle. It’s been and eye opener for me.”

If you’d like to get your business involved contact Nic at nicola@mainstreamgreen.co.nz.