The Greening of Hair Salons

Inside Acorn organic salon in Dover, Co-owner Allie Degan chats about hair color with a new customer.
(150 1:45 okay, let’s talk hair, you want it to be lighter right?)
When Degan dyes hair, the usual foul smell isn’t there.
And the customer isn’t tearing up.
Degan says that’s because Acorn salon doesn’t use hair dye products with the most common ingredient, caustic ammonia.
Degan “Ammonia hair color is really not good for you it’s not good for people to breathe in it’s not good to have it on your skin.”
It’s common for stylists to work with all kinds of harsh chemicals and solvents– many that are suspected or known to cause cancer, birth defects or severe allergic reactions.
But Degan says Acorn organic salon uses only natural organic products, no ammonia from hair coloring, and no formaldehyde, acetone or toluene from nail polishing.
She says you won’t even find fragrance, preservatives or coloring in the shampoo.
Customer Gretchen Hatfield is experiencing an organic hair color for the first time.
150 3:23 I very seldom color my hair, and one of the reasons is just the whole idea just seems so foreign to me just the harshness of it so this really intrigued me.
Customers might pay a little more for a hair color change at Acorn, but Degan says organic doesn’t mean expensive.
“17:35 I think people do kind of get scared they see organic and they automatically assume it’s going to be a lot more expensive, but even the cost of our services we kept the same as the salons that we left.”
(nat sound sink)
Degan says this isn’t greenwashing…she’s not trying to make claims about the salon’s green efforts that aren’t true.
She says a lot of things prevent them from being as green or organic as they would like…for example they have to abide by sanitation laws.
155 8:11we have state laws that we have to adhere to and when we have combs and brushes and you use a comb, you have to sanitize it, so there’s really, I can’t run out back and throw vinegar on it, I actually do have to put it in a Barbicide and soak it for a period of time.
Some services typically found in most salons won’t be offered to customers.
Degan says she can’t find any environmentally friendly alternatives to hair relaxers or fake nails.
154 6:41 you’re not going to be able to come in and get acrylic nails, but for the people that can’t even go into an acrylic nail place or a regular nail salon, they’re going to be very thankful that there’s a place that they can go into and they can actually breathe, their eyes don’t water, the people doing acrylics are wearing a mask for a reason.
Degan says typical salons also create a lot of waste…magazines, paper towels, sheets of aluminum foil for coloring that must be thrown away after each use.
Acorn uses hand towels instead of paper towels, they have a book exchange, magazine exchange and purse exchange.
153 2:21 (sound of hair dryer..you’re going to be under here for 20 minutes, out for 20 minutes)
Co-owner Laura McKay says instead of plastic caps under the dryer, the salon reuses donated plastic shopping bags.
“147 8:44 out back we have a container so we’ll rinse them and then bring them to the grocery store to the shopping bag recycle box”
They even donate all their hair clippings from the salon to a company called Matter of Trust.
The company makes absorbent mats that are used to soak up oil spills.
160 3:01 we fill up probably a huge bag a month of hair clippings that go the company, so it’s something any salon do, you don’t have to be a green salon you don’t have to be organic any hair can go to them.
Both owners say salons aren’t normally considered eco-friendly.
But organic salons are popping up nationwide.
Acorn organic salon wants to be part of the trend.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.