The Lather Rinse Repeat Salon in El Granada stands out as a beacon of sustainability in the beauty industry, and owner Melissa McGuirk hopes to inspire others to follow. McGuirk, with more than three decades of experience in the beauty industry, is no stranger to the waste produced in the business.
“I’m in the salon every day,” McGuirk said. “I understand completely how much waste we contribute. I mean I’ve seen it for the last 30 years, but it wasn’t until I became a salon owner about a year and a half ago that I decided to dig a little deeper and find out if there was something else that we could be doing.”
The reality she discovered was stark. Many beauty products are laden with chemicals, rendering them unrecyclable by local facilities. Determined to find a solution, McGuirk turned to Green Circle Salons, an organization dedicated to sustainable salon solutions. Through their partnership, Lather Rinse Repeat Salon has achieved a “Certified Sustainable” status, meaning it repurposes 95 percent of its beauty waste.
McGuirk said that the goal at The Lather Rinse Repeat Salon is for each service to be climate positive and carbon neutral. This means that resources once deemed waste — leftover hair color, foils, color tubes and aerosol cans — are now recycled thanks to Green Circle Salons, preventing large amounts of waste from entering landfills each year.
According to Green Circle Salons, the beauty industry in North America generates 877 pounds of waste per minute. The Lather Rinse Repeat Salon is one of the 16,000 salons partnering with Green Circle to combat this waste crisis.
“If you’ve ever been to the salon and you’ve gotten your hair colored or highlighted, you have the foils, not to mention the tubes that the color comes in,” said McGuirk. “We collect balls and balls of foils at the end of the day, and all of that was just going directly to the landfill because, while it’s metal, it has chemicals on it.”
Green Circle Salons offers a service where salons can opt out of local garbage and recycling services, and instead opt in for the Green Circle service. For a small fee, estimated by McGuirk to be less than $1 per client, salons receive a box to sort waste which it sends back to Green Circle’s recycling centers where it’s repurposed.
“For example, hair clippings are now being turned into bioplastics,” McGuirk said. “I have cutting combs in my salon that I show my clients that are made from human hair.”
Hair has other uses too, like being broken down into fertilizer or used in cleaning up oil spills. What used to be waste filling up a landfill, is now being repurposed.
“On the coast, we’re surrounded by the beauty that is the world,” McGuirk reflected. “I’m looking at the ocean as we speak, and I’ve got the mountains behind me. It’s hard not to think about where everything is going and how it’s affecting the environment around me.”
The Lather Rinse Repeat Salon is only the second in San Mateo County to join the Green Circle Salons recycling program. McGuirk hopes her fellow beauty industry professionals on the coast will also adopt these sustainable practices and invites them to stop by her salon to see how things are done.
“I would love more than anything for the Coastside community to be the leaders in the county and in the industry with this program,” she said. “I’m a small little salon in a small little community, but I truly believe that if there’s any community in San Mateo County that can get on board and do this, it’s ours.
“It’s not just for us as owners, but also the clients,” McGuirk continued. “I think it’s really important that we show our clients that we’re committed to our community.”
The salon also exclusively uses the Authentic Beauty Concept product line, known for its sustainable, vegan, cruelty-free formulas free from microplastics, mineral oil, parabens and silicones.
“It’s really difficult not to look out the window and see how blessed we are to be surrounded by every element of mother nature,” McGuirk said. “(It can make such a huge impact) to come into your business and look around and see that there are small changes that you make. That’s my goal, to start small where we’re at, and hopefully encourage others to come and check us out so that we can make a larger impact here on the coast and maybe even in the county.”
