Adam Tudor From Quif Talks Recycle My Salon With Marc Carey

Adam Tudor from Quif hair colour talks with host Marc Carey about sustainability in the hair & beauty supply industry on this episode of The Recycling Room podcast. In this episode, they discuss ways that businesses can be more sustainable, why it's important to make sustainability a priority, and how salons can get started making changes.

You can listen to the podcast here:

[Marc Carey] 

So here we are, it's Adam Tudor here from Quif. Thank you very much for joining me today Adam. We're talking, of course, about this brilliant scheme Recycle My Salon. How are you today Sir?

[Adam Tudor]

I'm very well thank you Marc.

[MC]

And no doubt excited about being involved with this new scheme.

[AT]

Absolutely. Yeah, really excited. I think this is something that's been needed for a long time now and I'll be honest, I'm quite behind on knowledge of the potential problem that we were trying to tackle by getting involved with this scheme. In some of the research I've been doing I've been finding some really interesting stats that represent opportunities for ourselves and everybody involved with this initiative to make a real difference to the environment. So this is something I'm really, really excited and passionate about being involved with.

[MC]

I think one of the key things that comes through for me is this idea of thinking globally and acting locally. It gives the people at grassroots level the opportunity to engage in something because when you're running a business, post COVID of course, often you're so busy working in the business you don't have time to work on the business.

[AT]

Yeah, it's an age-old problem and something we talk about a lot with our customers. It's a challenge for everybody, especially post COVID. There's so many things for people to be concerned with, you know, just keeping the business afloat. Not least, but this is of equal importance, and maybe not so apparently, but it's definitely an issue that we all need to tackle together. It's about taking responsibility, everybody's got a part to play. Like you say every small thing that people can do at a local level will then contribute a bigger impact on the overall picture.

[MC]

Have you seen, from the perspective of your business and the work that you’re involved in, a response from your customer base or your supply chain? Were they paying a lot more attention or asking these questions about sustainability?

[AT]

Absolutely. Firstly, from our customers, the requests and questions that are being asked of us as a manufacturer and as a brand are increasing, in terms of what are our approaches to sustainability, about being responsible, from the packaging that we produce through to our supply chain. We are very fortunate to work with some excellent suppliers who are way ahead of us in terms of their efforts around sustainability and responsible production of products. So we're very pleased to be working with manufacturers that have got some really good things in place to minimize the impact of what we're creating on the environment. The demand is definitely growing and awareness of it is growing everywhere, but particularly in our industry because I think the realization that we are potentially quite big contributors to some of the problems that we're facing. But flipping that around, there's a real opportunity for us to do something about it and make an impact.

[MC]

Do you think, within your industry, bringing all of the key players together to collaborate on these matters is something that you've seen happen before? Or do you find that your industry tends to work more in a kind of silo approach? 

[AT]

I think it is quite new. I think the hairdressing industry is quite close-knit. Everybody seems to know everybody and whether you're a brand or within the salon side of the industry, there's a lot of people connected, it's quite a small industry. I feel that sometimes people would hold their cards close to their chest, particularly on the supply side because, whilst there's a lot of great friendships in the industry, there's a lot of competition as well. So, when it comes to commercial initiatives people can tend to operate quite independently. But for something like this, it would make no sense for somebody like ourselves to try and come up with our own scheme and then everybody else that's collaborating on the scheme do their own thing as well, because ultimately the impact will be far less than if we all work together, which is what I'm really happy about. I think that anything works better when people collaborate and join forces, the overall impact of what you do together is much greater. So it's really refreshing for me that everybody, including ourselves and other big industry representatives, are coming together to make the schema a reality. It's really good, really exciting.

[MC]

It gives you an air of authenticity as well.

[AT]

Yeah, definitely. I think these brands and companies are well respected, they've got a lot of heritage, and we're fairly new to the industry but we're backed by people who've got a lot of credibility in the industry. I think that authenticity and credibility is absolutely key for people to buy into any scheme or anything that is trying to bring about change. 

[MC]

Yeah, we've seen too many greenwash episodes I'm afraid over the last 15/20 years.

[AT] 

Yeah, way too many box-ticking exercises are happening, and people just saying the right thing. For change to happen people have got to take action and what we're hopefully doing here is starting a journey towards a different way of operating. Hopefully in 10 years time we'll look back at this point and say it was a real pivotal moment, the launch of the recycle Isola scheme.

[MC]

I must say, I know that this is dealing with one specific area but the figures that have been quoted in terms of colour tubes, aluminium colour tubes and used foils that go into general waste are concerning. I'm not trying to blame anybody because if you're working in a busy salon, you've got the clients queuing out the door, you've just got to crack on. So I can see why it's difficult but you give them a simple option to recycle these tubes and that will make a huge difference to landfill.

[AT] 

Absolutely. The figures are staggering and to my understanding at present only 1% of the used hair foils which are a fully recycled material is actually recycled. The scary thing with that is, what does that mean? So, that foil that ends up in landfill is going to take at least 400 years to break down. That's crazy because the material itself is fully recyclable. There's some really interesting stats on aluminium as a material, 75% of all aluminium ever created is still in circulation in some form today. So it's a really circular material in that it can be recycled. It takes far less energy to reuse material that already existed as another product than it does to mine and create it in the first place. The process of mining for aluminum is so destructive to the environment and the energy that it takes to do that. So I think that's probably one of the biggest USPs of it really. There are lots of things you can do to reduce waste and minimize the impact on the environment but aluminium is huge and for us as a brand producing tubes of hair color and the Color in Service will have a big impact if we don't take responsibility and offer a solution to minimize that impact on the environment.

[MC] 

In a sense as a distributor, or a provider and a manufacturer it allows you to close that loop in some way or to create a full-cycle approach to your products.

[AT]

Well that's it, we are using our position to help facilitate this. I think for salons the big thing is time, like you say the busy work, and they need a solution that's simple, cost-effective, doesn't take too much thought but enables them to do the right thing. I was fascinated by a recent study that was conducted by Bangor University, by implementing a structured recycling policy within a typical stylist salon they were able to reduce the waste they sent to landfill by as much as 75%, which is huge and that's not by massively changing anything. It's by awareness as much as anything else, you can get so caught up in your day to day goings-on that it's easy to forget but if you can make it a habit then it definitely makes it easy for everybody.

[MC] 

Let's go industry-wide now, do you think the industry has done enough in the past? Is this a tip of the iceberg?

[AT]  

Yeah, I'd say so, I think in the past there's been murmurings of things happening but I don't feel like there's been as much emphasis on it as there is now. I think the global picture is obviously helping with that. There's recently been a cop 26 summit, it's something that people can't be unaware of, if you don't know about the issue then you've been living under a rock. Everybody, ourselves included, has got a collective responsibility to do something and together we can each play our part. Yeah as an industry, historically, we definitely could have done more but look where we are. For me it's more important to look ahead, not reflecting on what we could have or should have done but what we're able to do now moving forward. You know we've still got room for improvement but it's not all going to happen overnight and at least this is a starting point.

[MC]

It's drawing that line in the sand and as you say moving forward in a proactive and positive way. So in terms of thinking about the USP of Recycle My Salon, I'm going to put the question to you in a slightly different way, what's the UVP? What's a unique value proposition?

[AT]

Okay, well for me there's three elements to this. It's something that's convenient, extremely affordable, accessible, and simple. The overarching message is that it's a way for salons at a local level to make a real difference to something which is a global issue. Everyone's able to play their part and it takes the thought process out of it for people. It's just a no brainer really. The issue with the aluminum waste produced by salons as I understand it is not with the material itself, the material is fully recyclable, it's the chemicals that are on it that need cleaning. This program is able to facilitate that process to make the material into a format that's recyclable and put it back into the system again. I take my hat off to whoever did the research and came up with the idea and was able to follow it through, unbelievable because without people like that then we'd still be walking around scratching our heads. It takes these kinds of pioneers to come up with these ideas and to say hey look we can we can do something here and then everybody gets involved.

[MC]

Yeah, and as you say in effect this gives the opportunity from both ends of the market in terms of grassroots and top-down. You know, filtering down from a top-down approach in terms of the industry, and then allowing those people right down to the consumer to make those choices about how they can affect some of these issues around climate change. Often when we see David Attenborough sitting on the television talking about how long we've got before the planet turns into Mars, we sit there and say well what can I do? So giving them, like you said, those simple options that are accessible, easy to operate allows them to have a clear conscience and go “well at least I'm doing something”.

[AT]  

Oh yeah 100%. It can be so overwhelming, sometimes you can be presented with these mind-boggling stats of volumes of waste and pollution and destruction that's happening, and it just makes you want to shrivel up and think what can I possibly do to make a difference? But it's just breaking it down into small parts, isn't it? Everybody on their own level can do something and it may seem trivial or small but combined together it will make a difference. It's about this opportunity that we've got now to make a positive change. When it comes down to it, it's a responsibility. I think anybody that's starting out now as a brand or a manufacturer or supplier amongst everything else that they do to start a business, the sustainability program should be as much part of that as anything else. Our goal is to create the best quality products we can for our customers but in a way that's as responsible as possible with as little impact as possible on the environment and there's plenty we can do on that so it's definitely the start of a journey towards that.