Renscene’s Sarah Cawkwell Talks About Her Backing for the Recycle My Salon Scheme

[Sarah Cawkwell]  

My name is Sarah Cawkwell, I'm managing director of a company called Renscene Limited.  Sitting on the council of the HBSA, a couple of prominent members came to us and said they were involved in the aluminium business and that there needed to be a change. They had ideas as to who they might be able to work with to supply salons across the UK with a recycling option for their colour tubes. As a business, we're involved in salon hygiene with suppliers Barbicide, who are the number one salon hygiene solution. For us, we're always looking at ways to be greener and we're very happy to get behind projects such as this.

2020 saw a huge leap in interest in proper hygiene systems in salons, we saw a huge uptake in our product and 2021 increasingly so. We're very pleased to see that people are obviously taking on board the need to keep the industry open. People have been looking at the balance in their lives more than anything and spending a little bit more time outside and being more appreciative of the effects that we have on our planet, they've likely brought that back into their workplace and hair is no exception. I think before COVID, people would say this industry was non-essential but after COVID they would probably say it is essential because it really does make people feel good. 

All of us have to do more and do better. I think there's a real appetite, especially among the young people in our industry, they're genuinely interested in wanting to be more sustainable in their work and are supporting mechanisms that will help them do that. Speaking to hairdressers and barbers about what their aspirations are, what they want for their businesses and how they want to exist within their work, there's an appetite for it. I saw an article recently on a company that's collecting waste hair and creating sea floats with it to absorb oil spills which is incredible, that's just so brilliant that hair can be used in that way.

The fact that the media are highlighting some of these things is really good. Social media helps perpetuate these ideas and messages and implementing them into salons. It's good and it needs to grow as quickly as possible because it's an immediate problem.

The main thing about it is that it is so simple, and it has to be simple. We don't want to make the process really complex for the salons. People have to have an awareness that they can recycle their colour tubes and then they just need to put it in one box, this gets taken away, it's returned empty and we start the process all over again, it's all taken care of for them. I think that's important because they're running businesses and they're busy people, so we want to make it as easy as possible for them.

I'm aware that there are some other companies doing the same thing but only because of being a sponsor and getting involved. Thankfully, there were other people out there and it's one of those things that you think Thank God that we're not first and the only ones doing it. It's not a widely known scheme. The people I've spoken with in salons and barbers immediately see that it's a great idea and no one else I've spoken to is currently doing it. So yeah, it's very timely.

Nothing's gonna bring people together more so than sustainability because it goes right across the board and everybody benefits. I don't think anybody's particularly looking to make anything from it because the environment should be the winner here. I think in terms of our industry we're really at the beginning and there's so much more we need to do, we need to look at the whole industry and system within salons, for example manufacturing closer to the point of use. We need to think very hard about what we're putting into the environment and make it as non-harmful as possible.