Hello, dear friends!
And the happiest of happy New Year to you! All around, the air is positively buzzing with an excitement found only in the first weeks of January, fueled by fresh starts and resolutions for betterment.
Can you feel it? We certainly can, and we are all about it. Few things in life quite match the exhilaration of deep-diving into that sort of energy and then running full-speed ahead, waving your arms wildy and shouting, “POSITIVE TRANSFORMATION.” (Oh. Is that just us?)
Anyway…
If you know Ginger, you know that 1) from our B Corp™ status to our Green Circle Salons practices, we’re in it for sustainability, and 2) our absolute fav question is, “What next?”
And what a wonderful time (perhaps the most wonderful time) of the year to combine these and ask, while sipping on our best cozy-weather bevvy, “How else can we lessen our negative impact on Earth?”
As a business, we’re continuously taking the steps to do our part. Why not break it down further? This year, why not also commit ourselves as individuals to making even more small, manageable changes, both while in the salon and outside of it?
It seemed so obvious, and yet, so brilliantly simple. But where to start?
As we pondered, we brought our warm cuppa to our lips, and paused, realizing we had just moved the change we were looking to make right under our nose.
Let’s talk about coffee cups. Specifically, the single-use variety.
Bad news: A thin plastic coating on the inside, called polyethylene, means the bulk of disposable coffee cups are not recycled and do not biodegrade, despite being made of paper. A quick internet search puts the estimate in the billions (that’s billion, with a B) of them being tossed into a landfill each year in the U.S. alone, where they sit, ultimately contributing to pollution and/or global warming. Yikes. Ices that drink a bit on the way down, eh?
So what is our part in this? One cup doesn’t seem like much, and it’s easy to miss them adding up. Currently, Ginger Salon employs 26 people. If we each used just one a day, January would see us collectively adding 806 cups to the landfill pile. Over a year, that number becomes 9,490.
Cut in half, even quartered, that’s still a pretty big number, and while we hold a “go big or go home” attitude in most areas of life (ex: fabulous hair), producing waste is not one of them.
The solution?
Mugs! Travel tumblers! Those weirdly comforting dishes with handles that don’t know if they’re a cup or a bowl!
Whichever you choose to house your morning joe, they all stand to offer thousands of uses to a takeaway cup’s one (and yes, we know that sometimes we get a refill and that boosts it to two). What’s more, chances are the material used is either recyclable or of very little environmental impact–bonus points for glass, which is both.
And so, here it is. Our first small step of the year: eliminating the existence of disposable cups, in the salon and in our lives. After all, nothing beats the taste of creating less waste.
P.S. We’re big believers that every little bit counts, especially when those little bits are done by a lot of people, so we invite you to come along. Stay posted for our latest sustainability shifts. Some may be changes you’ve already made and some may be new. Wherever you’re sitting, if they feel doable for you, we’d love to have you join us.