Salons which recycle hair get a head start (From Tewkesbury Admag)

Salons which recycle hair get a head start

11:44am Thursday 12th February 2009 in Evesham Vale

BEING environmentally friendly has become a hair-raising experience at two salons in Stow and Broadway.

Human hair is being recycled by Spirit Organic, a company that has run a hairdressing salon on The Green in Broadway for 16 years and opened another in Stow’s Brewery Yard on Tuesday this week.

Deciding to become eco-freindly, the company started pioneering organic hairdressing in 1999.

Its Broadway salon runs on renewable energy, it recycles papers, uses oil-free inks for printed material and provides carrier bags made from recycled papers.

Spirit Organic also serves Fair Trade and organic teas, coffee, and water. It will introduce most of these measures to its new Stow salon.

Tabitha James-Kraan, Spirit Organic’s proprietor, said her 16-plus employees collect customers’ hair in bags.

She said these cuttings are then offered, for free, to customers who spread it in their gardens because the smell of human hair scares off deer and snails that damage flowers and plants.

Tabitha said they have also offered the hair to garden centres for free.

She said an American company manufactured oil-absorbant mats from human hair and she was now seeking a British company that did the same so Spirit Organic could supply it with hair.

Tabitha said: “We always try to recycle anything that’s possible to recycle. Hair is an extension of that. We’ve done some research and looked at other ways of recycling human hair.

“We’re keen to stop it going into landfill.

“As responsible businesses, we should all do what we can to recycle.”

She said the new Stow salon was opened because they knew they had a good client base in the town as many customers travelled from there to the Broadway salon.