Phillip Sharp has High Hopes for the Environmental Impact of the Recycle My Salon Scheme
[Phillip Sharp]
My name is Phillip Sharp, I'm the front director for ASP. ASP is a predominantly global colour house and we operate in the hair and salon market and sell products for professional colour.
[Marc Carey]
Welcome Phillip, thank you very much for joining me today. I’m very excited to talk to you about this brilliant scheme Recycle My Salon.
[PS]
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
[MC]
Tell us a little bit about yourself and about your business first.
[PS]
So I've been in this industry for far too long now. I've been working with ASP for around eight years. My role is the brand director so I get very involved in the processes of developing new products, discovering emerging trends and articulating our brands to the market.
[MC]
I like that you said emerging trends. I feel like I might be able to get an exclusive out of you today on any emerging trends that are on the horizon.
[PS]
We'll see.
[MC]
So this scheme Recycle My Salon, how did you first get introduced to it?
[PS]
Well, I was delighted to receive an email from Ian Aherne, who is the managing director at Salons Supplies which is one of our distributor partners that we work with, and he explained what this scheme is all about. As soon as I read the email, I knew it was going to be right for our brand.
[MC]
So in a sense was there already a theme around sustainability in your brand?
[PS]
Absolutely. In terms of those emerging trends that I mentioned before, we're seeing an emergence of sustainability at all levels right now. In some ways we're still in the early stages of developing our own sustainability policies but it's very much at the forefront of our minds and we're making great strides to improving our sustainability.
[MC]
Yeah, so I guess it just makes sense for you to support a scheme of this nature. It's interesting to see how this scheme has bought so many people together. It really is an industry-wide project.
[PS]
From our side it's very much about the community and working together on issues that are just too big for one brand or company. By working collectively we can make a real difference across the industry.
[MC]
In the last few years there have been lots of warnings, I mean there's been warnings for many years about the environment admittedly, but recently there's been a lot of doom and gloom stories out there, so we need some positive messages about people combatting climate change, don't we?
[PS]
Yes we do. At the end of the day it's very much in the clients’ mind. We had COP26 at the back end of last year which really highlighted all the different environmental challenges that we face. I think everybody's got a role and a duty to make those purchase decisions to help leverage change in our industry and the wider market.
[MC]
Starting at grassroots with this, one of the unique propositions of this scheme is how simple it is for salons and the hair and beauty industry contributors to get involved.
[PS]
Yeah, absolutely. It's simply a case of getting your aluminium tube, putting it in a box and arranging for that to be collected or popping it into a wholesaler. So it's definitely something that can be easily done, it just needs a little bit of extra thought than putting it in the dustbin.
[MC]
I understand as well that for a number of years that certain salons and establishments thought that their tubes were already being recycled, so there's a bit of education around this I guess.
[PS]
There's no doubt that aluminium is fully recyclable and absolutely should be recycled. It can go around the production chain many times over but unfortunately, things don't always get recycled how we need them to be. This scheme ensures that it will go through the correct route and get reused.
[MC]
I guess people take things for granted a little bit as well because we're so used to the idea of recycling cans. Do you think the fact that the industry members have come together as a top table and a grassroots initiative will impact the breadth of your message?
[PS]
Absolutely. We're working with some very strong brands in our industry and there's no doubt that we can scale up that message by working together. We've got to impact change when the colour houses that are involved in this project are servicing most of the market.
[MC]
Talking about trends, has coloured hair been on the increase? Everywhere I seem to go I see somebody with crazy coloured hair, or is it just that it's become more prevalent thanks to social media?
[PS]
Well, the colour business is really the bread and butter for the hair market and salon industry. At ASP we sell millions of tubes a year, globally, and that's really why we wanted to get involved in this project because we're just one brand so imagine the collective volume of waste that's not being recycled. Colour is huge and is really important to the salon market so it's an important one to crack as far as recycling.
[MC]
Yeah, I guess it leads to the question of what else can be done. This is the tip of the iceberg, in a sense, of what could be done in the industry. What else could be done to support this low carbon agenda and our head towards a net zero environment?
[PS]
The hot topic right now is the use of PCR plastics and no doubt we'll see much more movement towards that in packaging, particularly as we've got this new plastic tax coming in April this year. I also think that another keyword we need to consider is 'refill'. I can imagine that in time we're going to go full circle from the days of the milkman reusing glass bottles. In fact, we're about to remove the plastic pumps from our shampoos and conditioners because there is no point in producing that pump every time when it can be reused by the stylist, and we just need to encourage that change.
[MC]
Yeah, again it's often the simplest things that can really make a change, isn't it? You just conjured up an image in my head when you said about the milkman, I just imagined a little electric float going around with tiny tubes instead of milk bottles.
[PS]
The other thing I want to say is look at how much the markets have changed. In my early career I was a supplier at one time in the produce industry for a supermarket. I worked with project suppliers on how we could chop up the product, whether it was cauliflower, broccoli, etc. Whatever it was, we would chop it up and add it into different plastic containers and sell it. In today's world this sounds horrendous when you think about it, doesn't it? We've got to consider recycling, using fewer resources and being more efficient.
[MC]
I think sometimes, I don't know why, in manufacturing common sense seems to go out the window. I still see bananas packaged up and think nature has given it its own covering, but that's another story. So, this is a really great scheme and so many people in the industry are getting behind it. In terms of the broader benefit, of course we've got to talk about the environmental benefits, but there's a common sense economic view here as well. There's got to be some benefits for the economy down the line.
[PS]
Well, absolutely. If we can get more recycled aluminium back into the supply chain that'll reduce the need to mine new aluminium which might lead to better costs in the future for everybody which, given the escalating costs we see across the board with Brexit and COVID, could be a good thing.
[MC]
In terms of the incentive for the salon owner, do you think that the message about keeping it simple but also accessible will get them more engaged with this scheme?
[PS]
I think it's ultimately down to the client and stylists working together to help embrace that change. Only by making decisions in our purchasing will people change their habits. We are seeing a massive trend for recycling right now, we get lots of client requests asking all sorts of questions about our sustainability position and I think salons are getting the same questions from their clients. Clients can be quite demanding and they want to know what businesses are doing as their bit to help the planet.
[MC]
Yeah, I guess in the future narratives it'll just be commonplace. They'll look back and say "what you didn't use to do that?" but there has to be these milestone moments where schemes like this evolve and emerge in order for people to take notice.
[PS]
That's why it's really good that it's working with a collective of brands rather than individual brands that might have their own policies and ways of doing things. The whole industry is giving the same message about how to recycle aluminium which makes it quite easy for everyone, does't it? That's the major benefit of working together on this.
[MC]
I think that joint messaging is really important. Moving forward from this point, what do you see on the horizon in terms of your business and the branding work that you're doing?
[PS]
I think it comes back to the point I said earlier about the move for recycled plastics. Certainly every day when it comes to our purchasing decisions we're considering what the options are to make the materials more sustainable. So I think that's going to be the next major challenge and opportunity for our brand.
[MC]
Most definitely. So from this point forward Recycle My Salon is ready to launch, it’s exciting times and great to be an advocate and part of it no doubt. Are there any final messages that you want to leave for our listeners today?
[PS]
I think the key point really is to not underestimate the power of our own purchasing. The hair and beauty industry plays a significant role in the UK economy, not just at the salon level but manufacturing too. When we make moves forward in the professional haircare market that often follows through to the retail market too, so the opportunity for us to make a change can be vast.
[MC]
That's a great finishing point. Phillip, it is been a real pleasure to speak to you today, thank you so much. Can I just say on behalf of the community at large thank you for getting behind this scheme and taking it out into the marketplace with your co-collaborators. Thank you very much, any final parting words?
[PS]
As a final point, we can't wait to get behind this initiative, push it out on our social media and through our wholesale channels. We can't wait to see how much aluminium we've taken out of landfill as part of this fantastic initiative.
[MC]
Brilliant Phillip. Thank you so much for your time today, much appreciate it.
