In an industry that focuses on making people beautiful, there's a new push to make sure the planet stays beautiful too. Maritime salons are partnering with a green company to help make their daily operations more environmentally friendly.

“Our local economy and people are ready to make that change,” says Peter Alexander, Maritime Beauty general manager.

That's a feeling shared by a growing number of salons in our region, prompting some of them to partner with Green Circle – a new company that aims to make the salon industry sustainable.

“We were very excited. You do feel guilty about where all the hair, the colour, the foils go, because it was going in the garbage,” says Holly Mattie, stylist.

Now, all of that waste is being recycled and reused.

“Green Circle's mission is to make the beauty industry 100 per cent sustainable by the year 2020,” says Scott Moon, Green Circle Salons regional education director. “Hair can be used to help clean up oil spills, which is fantastic. We've also got programs in place where we've used hair to actually create pillows which are distributed to refugee camps set up for victims of natural disasters.”

Using hair to help clean up oil spills isn’t a new idea, but in the past, salons sent hair to places that were already dealing with a crisis.

“Years ago when there was the big oil spill down in the Gulf of Mexico, I do remember collecting bags of hair and putting them in boxes and dropping them off at the mail,” says Mattie.

The ongoing recycling ensures hair booms or pillows are ready if and when they're needed. The company is also recycling empty cans and bottles and even leftover chemicals and bleach which are being turned into energy.

“About 70 to 90 per cent of what we were not able to recycle before now has a process of recycling and reusing so that's huge. That's very exciting, virtually no waste at the end of the evening,” says Stacey Turpin, salon manager.

Stylists say the collection process is simple and efficient and their customers are happy about it too.

“On all cuts and colour services there's a dollar eco-fee and if it's even come up, they ask about the extra dollar and we tell them very proudly what it's for and they're like say no more,” says Turpin.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Priya Sam