better their business and make it more sustainable over
time. When asked about how customers have reacted to
this additional cost, Price said, “The response is pretty
amazing actually. What I’ve learned from my position
is that clients do not know, they are not aware of the
impact that salons have” but once they are aware, said
Price, they consider how they spend $6 or $10 for cof-
fee everyday and only come to a salon once every five
weeks.
According to Price, salons were very optimistic
about increasing their rates because there is an emerg-
ing green economy growing and there is an understand-
ing of sustainability and costs that are associated with
it. Salon owners have said that they want to make a
difference, and that they don’t want to wait for this to
be mandated. “So eventually it’s kind of like extended
years of responsibility,” said Price. Recently however,
though salon clients have welcomed the program to re-
duce environmental footprint, some salon owners are
more concerned about how to administer the additional
charge.
Shortcuts Software, a software company that pro-
vides intuitive technology solutions in the hair and
grooming industry worldwide, has provided a solution
for their concern.
“We talked to our partner salons who were keen to
become more sustainable and they were mostly con-
cerned that the cost of removing their new recycling
program would fall on the salon simply because the
team might forget to add on the Green Fee,” said Short-
cuts general manager Richard Wildey. “Or, that it would
be too much of a distraction in general, so they may as
well just pay it. Automating this gets the process out of
the way and avoids burdening the salon with any extra
costs, so it’s a great way for Shortcuts to contribute to
the change.”
According to Shortcuts, salons can now spread the
cost of sustainability by automating the charge on their
software system. Salon owners can go green without
having to worry about forgetting to pay for the fee and
will not lead to higher costs. At the same time, service
providers and front desk staff are relieved from addi-
tional responsibilities.
GreenCircle has widely appreciated this move to
making things easy as possible for salons to pay the
Environmental Stewardship Fee. “As an industry, we
must move to a more sustainable approach,” said Price,
“it’s what clients want and what the planet desperately
needs. With Shortcuts’ support, we can make it simple
and quick to implement. At Green Circle Salons, we
can turn a salon into a sustainable business within 24
hours.”
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