Sustainability On Point By Paul Frasca

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SUSTAINABILITY ON POINT

By Paul Frasca

Planet beauty is an exciting habitat. There’s almost nothing you can’t have massaged, tweezered, tanned, waxed, lasered and – today’s topic – injected to enhance the natural you.

I’m still relatively new to the wonderful world of beauty, but for a tech geek like me, it’s actually really exciting to see how innovation is propelling this industry into a very sustainable, progressive future.

Ironically though, while we’re working harder than ever to defy the human aging process, we’ve left Mama Earth - the very thing that we need the most to sustain a long lifespan – at death’s door. Bit silly, right?

That’s why Sustainable Salons has been working with a number of beauty salons, dermal and cosmetics clinics for a little while now in an effort to learn more about how to improve the sustainability of this awesome industry. We’ve found that there are two elements at play here; the first are the ‘usual’ salon materials, which we’ve got covered by successfully recycling and repurposing metals, paper, plastics, razors, tools and chemicals. Tick!

The second issue is that there are even more products coming out of beauty salons that can’t yet be recycled, repurposed or reused because they’re either made from mixed materials or they pose a sanitary risk.

From our research, it seems that sharps are the pointy-headed elephant in the room right now. Hygiene requirements and best business practices make these little suckers unavoidable for most beauty salons, but the fact that these are often only used for a few minutes (or even seconds sometimes!) before they’re thrown away makes this issue urgent in our eyes. And that’s why we’re beginning on the journey to do something about it.

Handling and disposing of sharps after use is serious business, so we’re currently in research and development on a comprehensive solution that we hope will make the disposal of sharps safe for those handling them, while slowing down the aging process for Mama Earth, too.

WHAT IS CLASSIFIED AS ‘SHARPS’?

Sharps include any object that is used to puncture or cut the skin. Most commonly these are needles and syringes, but can also include scalpels, blades, and even razors for cutting hair. As they can easily cut or poke skin, they can transmit blood-borne diseases and are considered a biohazardous waste.

WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING NOW?

According to our research, the average sharps-using business (e.g. a cosmetics clinic) fills a 2-litre sharps container every fortnight. Yikes! And after surveying a number of businesses using sharps regularly, we discovered there are a few main reasons preventing them from being disposed of properly. In Canberra, for example, a business must drop off their sharps to a facility themselves – there is no collection service available (hardly an incentive to do the right thing!). In other areas, the service is expensive, which makes it tough for small businesses to accommodate. And ultimately, sharps disposal is not regulated, and so individual businesses are left to decide how much responsibility they want to take for this serious waste item.

Ultimately, when there’s very little information and education provided about the effects of this on the community and the environment, the seriousness is often brushed aside, and the sharps are thrown straight into the rubbish bin… and for me, that’s more than just a little sting.

SO, WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT?

Having sharps in the domestic waste stream puts people in harm’s way, including cleaners, waste collectors, waste processors and even bystanders. Also, when needles end up in landfill, they take hundreds of years to break down, not to mention the biohazard hasn’t been eliminated before dumping them in the Earth! Instead, according to Australian and New Zealand standards, they should be incinerated at specialist facilities.

CAN SHARPS BE RECYCLED?

Unfortunately, no. Due to the biological contamination, sharps can’t be recycled. Plus, most sharps products are made of a combination of metals and plastics that can’t be easily separated – another reason that makes them tricky to recycle.

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

At Sustainable Salons, we’re in a unique position to begin researching a solution for our members that supports their willingness to put their hand up and take responsibility for this waste item.

At the moment, we’re looking into how to supply our salon members with a specialised SHARPS container, the necessary education to go with it, a safe and effective collection process, the best equipment for our depot handlers and a local, recognised specialist treatment plant that would neutralise the biohazard and incinerate the sharp.

We’ve only just begun and we have a number of logistical and critical safety wrinkles to smooth out before we can pilot this process, and eventually release it across our entire membership.

But, we’re passionate about giving Mama Earth a real shot.