Community Partner:
I have chosen to partner with Nina Nguyen and Sonia Robinson, owners of Salon 454. On average, salons use 270 gallons of water per day per chair (WATER USAGE ROUGH ESTIMATES, 2020). This coupled with approximately 150 million pounds of unrecycled aluminum foil chemicals and plastics each year (Hudgins, 2019). The hope is to find sustainable practices for this salon, and that could inspire other salons in the area to become sustainable. My strategy is to engage with the owners from a cost savings perspective. I intend to do this by recommending alternative practices to achieve the same goal. For example, one recommendation is to air dry the towels and capes used in the salon overnight. This will reduce the usage of the dryer, reducing the overall energy consumption.
Historical and Contemporary Context of Issue:
Hair salons are historically not sustainable businesses, and they have poor recycling habits. Water and chemical usage mixed with high electrical consumption is commonplace. A salon-style hair dryer can use anywhere between 2200w up to 3000w (Wethedryers, 2019). These are mixed with other appliances such as Hair Cookers. When applying dye to hair, they also use 1300w of electricity (Pro, 2021).
These are the salon industry's standard tools, and the hygiene requirements also require clean towels, capes, and tools. Electricity and water are used to clean and maintain these standards. Attempting to reduce waste and utilize more sustainability products will save the salon money on its monthly utility bills. It will also help to reduce the carbon footprint of the salon.
Connection of Issue to ESP Coursework:
The courses that I took that best prepared me for this assignment were: EME-444, GEOG-432, EM-SC-240, and METEO-469. EME 444 was one of the most beneficial to me for this project. It specifically covered energy demand and sustainability within the built environment. This course helped me to understand the demand and supply portions of energy requirements within a given area. It also helped me to understand the dynamics in the Northern Virginia area. GEOG 432 enabled me to understand the policies that go along with energy and sustainable needs. It also gave me a broader view of climate change impacts and policies. This more comprehensive view enabled me to understand not only local consequences. It also showed me how local effects could impact neighboring areas and how they affect regions.
Connection of Issue to the UN Sustainable Development Goals:
My project aligns with UN SDG 5 Gender equality, 11 sustainable cities and communities, and 13 climate action.
Salon 454 is a minority woman, military spouse owned business. Nina Nguyen is a first-generation American; her parents are both immigrants from Vietnam. Sonia Robinson is also a first-generation American. Her parents immigrated from Puerto Rico; she is also married to a retired military veteran. Helping to make their business environmentally sustainable will also increase economic sustainability. By operating a business that is fully sustainable other businesses will be inspired to follow suit and reduce the gender gap.
SDG 11, By focusing on a business known for electric, water waste, and chemical usage, sustainable cities and communities are obtainable. Identifying waste and opportunities to reduce waste will help to create a more sustainable business. The follow-on tactic is to empower the salon to help other small businesses in the area focus on sustainable practices. These approaches, mixed with reducing water and electric usage, align with the UN's 11th SDG.
SDG 13, reducing the amount of resources used at Salon 454 will lessen the demand. Using high-efficiency appliances, hanging drying clothes, and turning off lights when not in use, hundreds of kWh can be saved each month. These simple steps will help deter power consumption and help reduce investment in fossil fuels. Leading to less electricity being produced by nonrenewable means.
Personal Connection:
This project matters to me for a few reasons. I am interested in helping businesses and communities become sustainable. A few years ago, I took an architecture and sustainability course, which sparked my interest. This is a good pilot project for me to understand and learn the ins and outs of helping small businesses become sustainable. Hopefully, the lessons I learn from this capstone project could turn into a new career path.
Secondly, the built environment is responsible for the bulk of pollution and energy consumption. Mostly due to poor habits that compound, lack of knowledge, HVAC systems, or high energy-consuming appliances. The majority of these can be reduced by educating business owners or showing a cost-benefit analysis. The analysis is extremely beneficial because it offers business owners exactly how much money is wasted on electricity. It also identifies more efficient ways to save energy and, by extension saving money for the company.
Finally, I have also always wanted to work in land conservation. Making small businesses more sustainable and helping communities or cities do the same will prevent urban sprawl. If cities have less environmental impact, more green space, and are more like, fewer people would move to the suburbs. With fewer people moving to the suburbs, the less land is damaged or built on, destroying natural eco-systems.
Proposed Deliverables to Community Partner:
· Excel doc that captures all utility use
· Recommendations for water reduction. 2/5/2021
· Recommendations for electricity reduction 2/5/2021
· Recommendations for sustainable techniques
· Report of Green Circle Salon Benefits
· Cost analysis report on efficient appliances
· Cost analysis report on utilities saved by using recommendations.
Root causes of the challenge.
Salon 454, and the legacy industry challenges they face to reduce their environmental impact. The beauty industry produces approximately 420,000 pounds of waste per year in the US. That’s 75 gallons per salon of water waste per day; combined with aluminum foil, plastic, chemical, and hair waste (Hammon, 2019). Electric use per month ranging from 1500kWh to 2500kWhs depending on heating and cooling conditions. The industry is known to be over the top with everything it does. For example, Salon 454 has a chandelier in its entranceway with 130 lightbulbs on it. They strive for comfort, convenience, and elegance; unfortunately, this leads to being wasteful with water, electricity, trash, recyclables, and chemicals. These are institutional trends in the beauty industry, which lead to water pollution and excess trash in landfills.
Salons in general, depending on the area, charge anywhere from $35.00 to $600.00 per service. Understandably if a client pays $600.00 to have their hair cut, styled, dyed, washed, and blown out, some extravagance is expected. Be it in the décor, a warm atmosphere, or the expensive silk capes. Luxury is one of the most significant selling points for salons, 454 is no exception. The storefront is ground-to-ceiling windows so foot traffic can look inside and see the interior and the unique French-style boutique. Each station has 8-foot French mirrors and wall-mounted cabinets to hold the stylist’s tools. The washing stations have two lay-back style hair washing bowls. The ceiling is industrial style with rows of bright lights to light the small space. These features in the salon are aesthetically pleasing, but they also create waste.
Other challenges salons face are historical practices, lack of options, and lack of resource knowledge. Salons use lots of lighting to highlight the work completed on the client's hair. With good lighting, the hair will shine more and show imperfections, allowing the stylist to be meticulous with their work. The lighting in most salons is standard 60-120w incandescent bulbs that utilized sparingly do not consume excessive energy. But Salon 454’s chandelier alone has 130 bulbs, with an additional 50 in the store and 25 on the outside store light. On lighting alone the salon consumes approximately 12kWh of electricity.
Water waste is another historical practice, not intentionally, but when the stylist is washing the excess chemicals out of the hair, high volumes are used. Washing dyes and other chemicals out of the clients’ hair, bathroom uses, and clothes washer use. Salon 454 use between 4700 and 8000 gallons of water a month. The bulk of this water going down the drain is polluted with hair chemicals that can be harmful to the environment. U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Jennifer Morace tested the water coming out of nine water treatment plants that lead to local rivers and watersheds. She found dozens of chemicals that were leftover from hair and other beauty products. One hundred twenty-six toxic chemicals are regulated under the Clean Water Act of 1977, but none have been added to this list since (INVW, 2012). These chemicals, regulated or not, are finding their way past the water treatment sites and back into the waterways.
Salons generally ships their products from outside of their regions. For example, Wella a European beauty company that sells products worldwide and ships their products worldwide. In the fiscal year 2000's net revenue, a company was 4,717 million dollars shipping billions of tons of product per year. Shipping across the Atlantic and then trucking the products to various locations throughout the United States and other countries creates large amounts GHGs released into the atmosphere from the transportation sector. Utilizing local or regional products such as Amika based out of New York, has a significantly smaller transportation footprint. In general, salons will order various products worldwide, with 973,112 hair salons in America in 2019 that is an enormous transportation impact (IBIS, 2019).
Salons also face recycling obstacles in human hair clippings, plastics containing chemicals, and aluminum foil. There are some options for human hair reuse in the form of wigs and other reuse methods, and charity organizations. The issue with using these is the hair must meet a minimum length to be accepted. On average, this minimum length is 10 to 12 inches in length. Most haircuts in salons are only a few inches in length, with few exceptions. This means that these clippings are swept up and put into the standard garbage to be sent to a landfill until it decomposes. Hair product chemicals also must go to specific recycling centers; they cannot go in with the standard recycling. There are centers within local areas to have the substances treated and recycled, but transportation becomes a burden for many salon owners.
Lack of knowledge in proper resource management is another hurdle salons face. Salon 454 has the floor to ceiling windows along its entranceway. This allows for street traffic to see the salon and it allows natural light in during the daytime. It also allows massive amounts of heat to escape during the winter months. In the summer, it allows the cool inside air to be warmed significantly by the sunlight, increasing the HVAC system's strain during the winter and summer. Installing blinds in the windows and using them during the day when the sun is shining directly into the salon would help reduce electricity use.
Other poor sustainable practices like leaving lights and appliances on during none working hours. Salon 454, after closing time in the past, left the HVAC, and water heaters operating at full capacity using approximately 10kWh of electricity over 6 hours. Additionally, leaving storefront and interior lights on would use approximately 6kWh to 8kWh additional watts overnight. By using better resource management and adopting better electric use practices, Salon 454 has been able to drastically reduce the amount of electricity it uses over the past two months.
GAPS
The typical gaps that Salon 454 faces are not unique to the salon or any small business. In general, they lack knowledge, lack of oversight, or using business as usual techniques that are outdated. Another gap is simple time management; salon owners work roughly 70 to 80 hours a week and conducting independent research into more efficient or environmentally friendly practices is not within their ability.
Since working with Salon 454, recommendations have been made in better operational practices. These include reducing the use of HVACs, water heaters, washers, and dryer usage, turning lights off after business hours, and installing power strips to prevent idling appliances. By executing these, the reduction in electric cost results in a lower monthly bill, that money is being reallocated to purchase clothes hangers to air dry clothes. Also, recycling bins to separate plastics, aluminum foil, and typical recyclables make it easier for the owner to transport the material to recycling centers.
By saving on electric costs, recommendations have been made to purchase applicators to reduce water usage. Installing low water usage applicators on the faucets and the rinse bowls significantly reduces the amount of water used to clean the client's hair. On-going savings will pay to purchase energy-efficient appliances such as a new refrigerator for the employees, energy-efficient coffee machines, and changing the lighting from incandescent bulbs to LED lighting. Combining better business practices, providing cost analysis reports, and using high efficient appliances will help reduce the salons' utility use and help them become more environmentally friendly.
Salon 454 uses on average 350 gallons of water and 15kWh of energy per month. The salon owners are welcoming to sustainable business practices that are outlined below. These recommendations provide both financial and environmental positive outcomes. The Salon by reducing its usage and upgrading appliances and practices can produce its own benefits. Using these sustainable practices will also help to reduce the business’s pollution impact. The recommendations and documentation is outlined below.
Recommendations to Salon 454 owners for electricity reduction / efficiency
• Hang drying clothes / using dryer only once a day.
o 1 hours of dryer use results in 3000w of energy and cost approximately $0.30 per use by shifting to drying racks for one load a day the savings are 3000w of energy and $0.30 per day and 18.00 per month. The pay off for purchasing and installing the hanging rack is two months of operation.
• Clothes Washer reduction in use to once per day.
o 1 hour of washing uses 500w of electricity, by running it once a day over a month the salon can save $3.00 per month and 15,000 watts of energy.
• HVAC turned off during nonworking hours.
o System 3 hours of use results in 3500w or $0.35. by turning it off for nonworking hours approximately 12 hours save $4.20 a day and $126.00 a month. It also saves 42,000w of energy.
• Chandelier / track lights switched to LEDs.
o Currently the salon is using fifty-five, 60w incandescent bulbs. by switching to LED the savings per month will by $37.50.
o There are an additional 20 lights in the salon that if changed out with LEDs approximately a $21.50 can be saved per month.
o The pay off time to change out all the lights with the savings from standard bulb use is less than one month.
• Turning outside lights off.
o by turning off the outside store lights during nonworking hours the 5 60w bulbs will only be lit for 3-5 hours per night will save $5.09 per month.
• Water heater
o Water heaters us 1300w per hour, turning the system off during nonworking hours can save a minimum of 3900w per night or $2.40. With a monthly savings of 117,000w, or $72.00
o Lowering the temperature in the hot-water heater a few degrees is another way to reduce electric waste.
• Recycle bins for items that cannot be recycled on site.
o Due to the chemicals that contaminate the aluminum foil, and the left-over residue from the hair products in the original containers unable to be collected on site. The Leesburg recycle center accepts these items at their facility. Purchase of these bins will allow safe onsite storage until monthly or bi-monthly drop off is needed.
• On site recycling
o recommend an additional trash bin specifically for onsite recyclable items such as paper products, non-chemical aluminum foil, and other consumables.
• Shift to Amika
o Shifting to Amika would reduce the range of transportation for your salon hair products. Amika is based in New York, the same region as Leesburg Va. Preventing shipping across country or internationally.
• Install highly efficient faucets.
o Standard water faucets use 2.2 gallons of water per minute, by installing faucets labeled WaterSene that can be reduced by 30% using 1.5 gallons per minute (EPA, 2021).
• Install power strips.
o By installing power strips and turning off the breaker on the strip will reduce the amount of background energy consumed by appliances.
• Hair Dryers
o Recommended salon switch from their traditional hair dryers that use 3100 watts to the highly efficient ones that use 1100-1200
Energy. (2021). Appliance Energy Calculator. https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/maps/appliance-energy-calculator.
EPA. (2021). Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator.
Hammon, D. (2019). How your salon visit contributes to your carbon footprint. https://inhabitat.com/how-your-salon-visit-contributes-to-your-carbon-footprint/.
IBIS. (2019). Hair Salons in the US - Number of Businesses 2003–2025. https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-businesses/hair-salons-united-states/#:~:text=There%20are%20973%2C112%20Hair%20Salons,increase%20of%201.1%25%20from%202020.