ep89 Shane Price

My guest this week is Shane Price, founder and CEO of Green Circle Salons, which helps salons become sustainable through the four pillars: be green, gain clients, build revenue, and save money. With over 16,000 members, they reclaim and repurpose more than 1 million pounds of beauty waste every year.

Join us and Shane and I discuss what salons can do to reduce their environmental footprint and make a real difference.

To learn more go to GreenCircleSalons.com
Interested in becoming a Green Circle Salon? Mention Chris Baran’s Headcases podcast and receive a special membership discount.

Complete Transcript

Chris Baran 0:00
How great would it be to get up close and personal with the beauty industry heroes we love and admire and to ask them, How did you learn to do what you do? I’m Chris Baran, a hairstylist and educator for 40 plus years, and I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success.

Well, welcome to this week’s episode of head cases. Now self labeled, I’m a fountain of useless information. My brain tends to retain facts that have absolutely nothing to do with our industry. For instance, I know that spam stands for spiced ham useless, but that’s the kind of stuff that my brain retains. Here’s a relevant one, though, that I learned from the guests that we have this week. Did you know that in North America alone, salons produce 877 pounds of waste every single minute. Just wait how long or just wait to use here how much volume that that actually is. Now, today’s guest is a successful Canadian entrepreneur who is helping us combat that waste. He founded the world’s first and most comprehensive sustainability platform for the beauty industry. His company helps salons, barbers, spas and manufacturers reduce their environmental footprint. He leads a movement of more than 16,000 beauty professionals who reclaim and repurpose more than 1 million pounds of beauty waste every year. He has presented to the European Union Congress in Brussels, Canada’s federal Federal Ministry of Environment awarded the company the award of environmental excellence. So let’s get into this week’s head case, a man with tons of relevant information, the founder of green circle salons, Mr. Shane Price.

Shane, welcome to head cases, and it is just a super honor and pleasure to have you on here. So welcome.

Shane Price 2:19
Thank you so much. Mr. Baran, it’s amazing to be here, and so looking forward to it. Yeah, thank

Chris Baran 2:23
you. Well, I have to look over my shoulder a couple times, because when people say, Mr. Baran, I usually think my dad’s here. But And mind you, in the mornings, when I get up at and I look in the mirror, I have to look in the mirror and say, Dad, go away.

Shane Price 2:37
Yeah, I’m right there beside you, right there.

Chris Baran 2:40
You’re beside with me in the mirror. I mean, it’s a your ghost. You have this plasma that’s coming up on my screen. I have to look for that now. But listen, firstly, just I want to jump into this right away, because I, you know, we’ve had a couple conversations as well. So just because I wanted to make sure that we can do justice. I mean, you know, being a fellow Canuck fellow canuckle head, this, I just think we come from the other sides, but being Vancouver, we’re very on Vancouver Island. We’re very and I, my whole family, has always been very recycling conscious, and I, and I know there’s a whole bunch of problems that we could come up with in our in our world, in coming up and right away, whether people choose to see it as a myth or not. You know, if they want to, we’ll pull their heads out of the sand for just a short while and bring this up. But I want to find, first off, just your hair story. Because, quite frankly, after we talked and I knew everything about your your your company, I just I assumed crazy. I assumed that it was only in the beauty business. But you have tell us a little bit about you’re not only just in the beauty business. And when did we start? And how did the hair story start?

Shane Price 3:50
Yeah, it’s so funny, because I’ve had lots of people say to me, you know, you have no business doing business in the beauty industry. Like, what? What are you doing? When I was starting out, yeah, that that kind of got started in 2009 and if you want the sort of pre 2009

we can go into that. But I, you know what, I was exactly in the right place at the right time when I sort of had this idea for green circle salon. So I had just come back from Japan. Actually, I lived in Japan for about eight years, sold. A business had come back, was going to go to my barber. Barber was closed. Found a hair salon. Was very, to be honest, very intimidated by the idea of going into a hair salon. But I went in. I needed a haircut, kind of

was kind of longer and shaggier. And so went in, and when I sat down in the chair, I was amazed by a number of things, one of those things being just the familial sort of relationship that the people around me had with the person that was performing their their style or their color, and the kind of deep conversations that that’s that i. Soon learn are very natural in a salon like the relationship you have with your your stylist is almost part to none. But I didn’t know that at the time, and so I found that fascinating. And then I also was fascinated by the waste that sort of was going on the floor and then being swept up or out of the sort of the sink where the foils come out and going into a garbage bag and then out to the curb, especially in Toronto, which is a city that’s had curbside recycling since like 1984 so they have a well established system for managing all sorts of waste, but so long waste, specifically, the majority of it was being swept into garbage, basically. And so I got curious about that. And that was sort of that the inspiration of, like, maybe, maybe this needs to, we need to take a closer look at it and understand, is there some other possibility salons could consider when it comes to all this waste, because, again, in Toronto, they’re paying for that garbage to go to curbside. Maybe there’s a different way to look at this. And that was the the spark and the inspiration,

Chris Baran 6:10
wow, and, and so here’s the part that, and, and I think that that once I have never, this is one of the first times we’ve met on online. I think we’ve met in passing at shows before and so on, but we’ve never had a really a chance to sit down and talk. And I think it was about a month ago, you and I sat down to chat about about this and and we chatted a little bit about how much volume that would be, etc. And while I while, I want you to explain just a little bit more about about how that got you to to green circle, etc. And including, including the business I, what I you and I chatted about the volume, yeah. And how, on your site, it says that there’s 87 877 pounds of waste that’s produced by the beauty industry every minute.

Shane Price 7:05
That’s correct, yeah, 877, pounds that go to landfill every single minute from salons in Canada in the United States. That’s correct. Yeah, yeah. So

Chris Baran 7:15
what I you know, and what I always find for people is like, it’s when somebody talks about, you’re gonna make a trillion dollars, or This costs a trillion dollars, like the government says, where we spent a trillion dollars in this. And I think to the average person, because it’s such a large number, it’s not relatable totally. And so even when I’m thinking 877 pounds, well, how much is that? What kind of ball? What would that be in relationship? So you and I went on just beforehand and give us just a little bit about if you thought about that 877 pounds per minute, what would that translate into, into a volume and something that we could recognize?

Shane Price 7:57
Yeah, so I love this, and I love the way that you’re looking at it because you challenged me to think about it in a different way, actually in our conversation. So I love that. So thank you. And where we calculated too was each and every day salons in Canada us are sending the amount of volume that would fill the Statue of Liberty in New York 1.4 times. So almost one and a half times the Statue of Liberty is going into landfill across salons in Canada us every day, every day. And you can see it in that way because I was there. I remember being there when I was a little kid, seeing the Statue of Liberty and just like how, how, how enormous it is, and to think that that’s that that’s going to landfill, and the big challenge is that 95% of all of that can go right back into our economy. Yeah, used again and again and again. Yeah. So,

Chris Baran 8:54
so, I mean, and if you think about that, you know, as you said, that I started to think of, I came from Humboldt, Saskatchewan, and it was a town of 3000 people, and I think downtown, it is, what does, what does? How would those statues of liberty in my hometown? Sure, and if I in the course of a year, that would mean I would have 300 Well, probably, what 400 and some odd statues of liberty in my town that would be take. And I just thought that was, was absolutely astounding. Well, I mean,

Shane Price 9:27
when you put it in that perspective, you’re right, your whole city, yeah, would be the whole city would be occupied with this amount of waste or these statues of liberty, yeah, the one profound way of looking at it, yeah.

Chris Baran 9:37
So tell us a little bit more about explain to us green circle, like, I think that some salons know what it is, because obviously, you have a lot of people in Canada and and the US using it, but tell us a little bit about it. What is it exactly? Yeah,

Shane Price 9:55
so, I mean, you know, we’re, I would call us, you know. We call our tribe, we call our community, our movement. We call them waste warriors, right? So really, it’s a, it’s a it’s a movement or a community of salon and beauty professionals that sort of are willing to step up and challenge the status quo. And the status quo is that when you when you go into your salon every day, you know you’re all of this waste that’s being generated. So when you think about it, the hair clippings, the foils, the color tubes, paper, plastic, chemicals, all of that are just going into landfill. Now, if you could imagine for a moment that just the amount of that that you deal with on a daily basis as a salon, as a bee professional, and then you multiply that by all the chairs in the salon. And then you multiply that again by, you know, the number of customers walking through on a daily basis, or on a weekly basis or on a monthly basis. And you can see how you can get to that sort of Statue of Liberty. And simple. You know, when you’re thinking about what is green circle salons, I think we are an organization that has really sort of gotten committed to building a win, win situation, where business model, where everyone is involved, so that everyone can win. What was, for me when starting this company was like, I built another company in the past, it was not this was going to be a company that was only going to do good. And I really mean that, you know, like to be a company that’s the challenge, and if you can do that, well, well, you know, when you build a business, you need revenue. You need revenue to follow. You need revenue to support the growth of the business. But none of that matters, because if your why isn’t solid, rock solid, right? You just, you just won’t be able to sustain the business, not ones into the future that we know are sort of going to be the businesses that succeed in the future. And having walked into a salon environment, and again, I said, you know to you earlier, like, I was a guy that people to me and said, like, like, you have no business doing business in the salon industry. You’re not from it, getting to work alongside beauty professionals. I would argue that today to my grave, because I am of the same guilt. I have a big heart, and I, I believe in hope. I believe that we can do better. And I think that almost everybody I met in this industry thinks the same way. They have hope. They know we can do better. It’s the most innovative industry in the world, and I, and I feel so fortunate to get to work within it and serve this industry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and thank

Chris Baran 12:46
you for that. I mean, first of all, I need, we need. I mean, let’s face we know everybody in our industry has big hearts. I mean, I’ve, I’ve seen in our industry talk to hairdressers and lawn owners, etc, who have so much heart, it’s almost, could be almost go to a fault. Sure, sure, they give so much. But I, I think just from a hairdresser’s perspective, let me just say from a human being’s perspective, you know when, when we think about, there’s a lot of things out there about, about about recycling, and there’s myths about it, and there’s, there’s people that want to debunk and they just say that it’s not working, won’t work, and blah, blah, blah, and I want to jump into that just a little bit. But from a hairdresser’s perspective, I would argue the point that if you talk to 10 hairdressers and you said, what do we do with when we recycle, they would say, well, we send our hair in, and if you put your hand there, they put it in sock, like tubings, and they can use it for picking up oil from oil slicks, and that’s a good thing. But then if you ask them, anything else they they wouldn’t know, yeah, so what? What could you talk tell, explain to us a little bit more about what happens and like, when this stuff is recycled, and what happens to it. And even more importantly, like I’m trying to visualize from your perspective, if you got whatever, 16,000 100,000 salons, and they’re sending you this big, huge box of stuff every day, where does that go to what do you do with it? Sure, so I realize there’s a lot of questions in there, yeah,

Shane Price 14:22
no, so we’ll unpack it little by little, and then just if I miss something, to ask me if I skip over something. But I think, you know, first off, it starts with the sort of the piece that I that I got committed to early on, which is if, if it is not going to be genuinely managed, if the program is going to result in any sort of what’s called greenwashing, which is a term that we hear about today, then it’s not going to work. And so, from the from the what does, what

Chris Baran 14:51
does greenwashing mean? Just because, you know, I mean, okay,

Shane Price 14:54
so there’s a lot of brands in the marketplace today expound. On the positive environmental benefits of their products or their services. And when you dig below the surface, I think in many cases, not all. I mean, in many cases, you can see that in reality, it’s they may be not having the positive impact that is being expressed in the marketing, or that the story is certainly more deeper than the one that maybe is being presented. So that’s greenwashing. And, you know, there’s a lot of regulation that’s that’s growing today around that in the US and Canada and Europe, that’s going to change that and how companies are allowed to talk about their sustainability. Or it could be Dei, I don’t know, whatever it is, but standard, we focus on sustainability, on on those, on those topics. So, so that’s greenwashing. And what we got focused on was, how do we bring in a third party that is going to audit our process and show us where we are failing, where we’re not living up to the credential that we we tell our salons we’re going to recycle 100% of the material that we take away from you, and we, we, we can say that if that’s not true. And so we get audited every single it’s every two years our audit process, and it happens by a body that’s based out of the UK called Carbon Trust. And I think we’re probably one of the only recycling companies in the world that would go through this process to be audited in this way. And so we are, we are excited because we can, we can very confidently say that everything we take away from a salon gets recycled and goes back into our economy in the way that we describe, it does, and so that’s obviously a good thing. It gives us confidence in what we’re doing. Because we want to move the needle environmentally. We want to set a standard now when it comes to different waste streams, you know, we have evolved into an organization that is able to have the volume of material to work more or less directly with companies that recycle the streams of of we call it resources, not waste, but that we generate. And so when you look at aluminum, all of that can be, I mean, aluminum is infinitely recyclable, right? It’s one of those things that you want to make sure that, you know, is getting recycled, because it’s something that on the other side, you know, of the equation, when they’re having to mine bauxite and go dig the resources and extracting those resources from the planet to make what you might call virgin aluminum, this is far more impactful than just recycling what exists in the marketplace today. I mean, when we think about that, I think, you know, if we looked at it on if, if, and we sort of did this exercise, we looked out into the future, if every single salon in Canada in the United States just did something simple, like recycle all of their waste, we Could 30,000,005 pound rolls of aluminum back in circulation. Hair foils, those five pound hair foil rolls back in circulation every year, 30 million rolls, right? So, like the possibility is endless, right? When we look at what’s possible in the world that’s growing up around us, right? Because this green economy is emerging, and so there’s more opportunity today than ever before, hair clippings, we often get asked about that. So green circle right now composts the majority of the hair clippings that come into us, as opposed to it going into landfill and creating methane gas, which is about 28 times more impactful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas contaminant, right So,

Chris Baran 18:46
and I never knew that. I never knew that. I mean, we don’t even need to talk up to everybody. What were methane comes from. And I do know that I drive past a a landfill every day and I see, and I see the flames going up through their stacks that, you know, and that’s all the methane being burned off. But I never knew that, even that that hair was compostable, because on I’m going to ask you this, because this is some of the things that could be confusing for people, because especially from hair and hairdressers, and our industry is hair. So any factoid that comes up about hair, we tend to grab onto that. And I’ve heard them say that you can dig up a I’m not professing that anybody goes up to dig up a corpse, but they say that if you, if you go out, whatever it is, and I don’t know what the figure was a couple of 100 years and there’s just a skeletal remains, but you’ll still see the hair. So how is it that? How do we How is it that, that that’s compostable? I even saw, and I want to give you one more things, not as a lead in Wink, wink, nudge nudge, but I when I looked at your site, you said there’s some of those things that happen from. That that you actually can put into products, etc,

Shane Price 20:03
yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So I will address Yeah, the other opportunities with hair. But yeah. So when you think about that, if even you know, when you see these mummies that have been mummies, or, you know, you see these tombs in South America, and like you said, They’re 400 back. They’re 400 years old, or 800 years old. They’re still like teeth, and they’re still hair, hair. So how is it possible? And so part of our process is maybe a critical ingredient or a critical part of the process, which I’m happy to share is that that hair has to be ground down to a very pulp, to a the size of a black pepper, a grain of black pepper, right smaller than that. So part of our process is that we have to grind this stuff down. And by doing that, you reduce the volume of it. And then there are specific types of digesters and specific types of composters that can take that and it can be managed in their system. Traditionally, the long strands of hair that we might think of going to compost very, very difficult. It mucks up the equipment. It doesn’t function well in compost. So this is part of our secret sauce of how we bring this to reality and that it can be composted and that hair. I mean, there’s so many incredible properties about it that we are exploring and on our next podcast together a year from now, we’ll be telling maybe not that long, maybe not that long, and hopefully not that long. We’ll be telling you the most interesting story. I can’t talk about it today, but it’s something that I want to share with you as soon as we can release it, because this is going to be a game changer for our industry, and, I mean, for the planet in a way that we can manage the stream. So, yeah, and so we do. So we actually, we’ve we’ve created recycling bins. We’ve created combs, you know, anything that you color, color bowls, anything that you can make using traditional salon plastics, because it’s really good, high quality plastic, the shampoo bottles, the conditioner bottles. We take those things, we grind them down, we mix them with our hair that’s been ground down in a kind of unique formula, and we’re able to mold those things into new products that can fit in our amazing so, you know. But the but you know, in your point is like, you’ve got to get to scale. You’ve got to get the people who who require these, from a packaging standpoint, to get behind you, and so here’s what I’ll tell you, is as the as the as somebody that works inside green circle, it’s that this is the long game that we’re playing here, and that for this to work, we need the salon community, and we need the brands who manufacture the goods, who sell us the packaging, to get behind it, too. And I’m finding now more than ever, as you know, these brands are stepping up, and they’re doing some amazing stuff to take the appropriate steps to reduce your impact. Extended manufacturer, extended producer, responsibility is what this is all about. So we need them there. This sort of responsibility of packaging waste now is extending to the manufacturer and to the brands who create these products. And now it’s, it’s a it’s an emerging trend, and they are looking at this very carefully. They’re thinking about how to reduce their impact. They’re being forced to, right? So it’s a good thing. We’ll all win when that happens. Yeah,

Chris Baran 23:51
and I want you to, I want to ask you to promise me, because it is on air, et cetera, but I would humbly request that when you get that, that you tell me right away, because I want, as soon as that’s done, I want to have you back on here to talk about, I

Shane Price 24:07
Pinky promise you that 100% Pinky swears, Pinky swears there, yeah, yeah, I love that. I’d love to thank you. I’m

Chris Baran 24:14
honored, you know. And it’s You said something in there when you were talking about the aluminum, you know, and it, I find it amazing, because I, you know, I go back to when we were much younger and married, young kids had, you know, had really very little money. So recycling beer bottles up. Well, no bottles because I didn’t drink beer. Wink, wink, nudge nudge. But you know, all the all the CANS that we saved up, cans and you got 10 cents for them, etc. And I just want to relate an interesting story the other day, because I my driver, and I have to say that that is my driver just means that, no, I’m not so wealthy and so on that I have a driver that is only my. Driver. I have a regular guy that picks me up to take me to the airports and back, etc, and it’s just a great relationship. However, like at Cape list last night, I got home from doing a program, and he was and I was talking about this, and he said, you know, he he went down to all his hands. He says, I want to be mindful. And he crushes every can. And he had, he says, I had this big industrial garbage bag full of this aluminum. And he took it down to the recycling center. And he said, Okay, here it is. And, and he’s guys said, you can, well, you can, here’s your slip, and you take that back down, and we’ll do XYZ, whatever they do. And they came back and any, and he said that they told it came back to him and said, It’s okay. Here’s for all of that aluminum. Here it is. Is. It’s you got $5.71 right? And, and, and he said, Well, what? And he said, Well, don’t even bother. Don’t even bother giving me the money for this five cent, $5.71 Why should I possibly do this? So, you know, we had this conversation about it after is like we went from and we used to get 10 cents. And I realize it’s probably a few things involved in why you don’t get it now and you did them. But I just, I was absolutely astounded that when he had this, I could only imagine crushed cans in there, how much that weight and how he got in his car. But then it’s only worth $5.71 right now. Is that? What is, how do what does that mean to you? Like, what’s the things that you have taken away from this recycling program, and how we recycle that? Do you find that as shocking as I did,

Shane Price 26:43
you know, I don’t find it shocking. I mean, it it’s interesting, because the business that we’ve built, right? So we had to figure out in the early days very quickly, how do you monetize this? Because all of the waste coming out of a salon, it’s basically why the cities don’t want it. It’s a cost, right? You’re talking about, we just, we just said that 1.4 late statue of liberties, the late in New York, 1.4 of hers produced every day, and it’s going to landfill because there’s no value. And so we had to figure out, how do we monetize it, and then, and then, and then convince people that there’s value to that inside of their salon, because this all of this material when it’s contaminated, you know? And so especially, especially in the world that we work, because it’s contaminated, and here there’s no market for it’s not like you’re out there selling, you know, these homes and stuff, like, there’s no market for it, so you’ve got to really be, we’ve had to be creative about how we can generate revenue and make this a model that is sustainable into the future. And so we can talk about that at some point later, in terms of, you know, how we do that. But, yeah, I’m not surprised and the the other side of this, which I find, I find, is a growing of growing interest to me, is this idea that, you know, large corporations, they’re very aware of the downstream impact that their packaging has, yeah, and very little has been done to address it to date. And I think there is, I’m not going to call it, I’m not going to call it, but I am going to call it. It’s a bit like corporate gaslighting, right? Yeah, and it’s not, it’s not the corporations. It’s the system that is allowed for all of us to feel like it’s our fault, like we have to do this thing to ensure our own our progeny and our children and our grandchildren have a future, you know, 2030, 4050, years from now, at the end of the century. I mean, there’s, there’s all kinds of conversations about what climate change can do. And I think what I the message that resonates for me now strongly is that, Chris, you did not, you did not cause climate change, and neither did I it’s not what we did. I’m not responsible to solve it, neither you what I’m responsible to do is everything I can in my power. That’s where I can touch and move things in my world. That’s all I can do. And hope that everybody else does too. And to me, I’m really focused on that part. I know it takes manufacturers, they’ve got to be involved in this, right? And they’re going to be forced to, and we will continue to push that. But collectively, we have to realize, as an industry, oh my goodness, the power that we have to have manufacturers do the things that we need them to do so that children have a future. I mean, that’s this is where we’re going, right? Yeah.

Chris Baran 29:59
Yeah, you know. And you and I think, first of all, I just have to say thank you, you know, for what you do. And this is, you know. I think if we don’t have leaders in our in our business and our community, in our world that that that catch on to this, and I’m you know, I know you’re not the only one, but I want to thank you because you’re here and for what you do. But the reality is, all of us look at, I want to take it back a step back. And and my son, my son, lives in California right now. And and I go there, and everything goes into recycling, yeah. And I come back here. I live in in Arizona. And Arizona, people, if you’re living, listening and watching, you can you’ll agree that there’s very little recycling that’s done here, as a matter of fact, that we’re only allowed to recycle number one plastics. And here’s the part that gets me, is the people that are here are corporations in our grocery stores. And when I bring home my groceries, and if I want strawberries, they come in a clamshell. Nine times out of 10 is not number one, right? And, and, and yet. So you there’s very little about, probably about only 10% of the plastics that I that I get out of the grocery stores are actually a something that is recyclable, yeah, yeah, and it just burns my bottom sure, when I think about this stuff,

Shane Price 31:30
yeah, yeah. It is the it is the unfortunate reality that we live in. And then when you imagine that your container would go into a bin with a bunch of other types of containers that you put in there, your family puts in there from other streams of plastic. And then that’s got to go to some place, and that’s got to be sorted properly. And then, you know, you begin to see how that maybe what would be 30, 20% could be recycled, drops down to that 9% that we often hear about today, and so, yeah, I mean, it’s certainly a challenge that we face. And I think inside of the beauty industry, and where we have this opportunity with salons is we require them to separate their streams out accordingly, and that really helps us to get to the recycling rates that we’re able to achieve together. So,

Chris Baran 32:20
you know, I just so what I mean one day when I, when I come out and get out east again, yeah, I want to come and I want to see what happens in there. I think that if we, you know, if we could, if everybody could see what happens inside there and and to know that look at if I put something wrong, into a can, into a into a container, like I can only, right now, give household terms, but in household terms that when somebody told me, and I went, Oh, well, you know, what the hell if you just leave that, you leave that water in the bottle before you throw and then throw it into the recycling bin, or what the heck. You know, it’s the wrong one, but they’ll figure it out. It’s not going to make a difference. And we put it into that, into that container with all the good stuff, and I put one of the ones that’s mislabeled. It’s not supposed to go in there. Is it true that that that stuff, the whole, the whole container of stuff, would get thrown out? So

Shane Price 33:16
imagine this. Imagine this. You do everything you’re supposed to do, yeah, and everybody doesn’t, yeah, then that’s all going to landfill. So imagine if your whole neighborhood did exactly what you do, and then the airport just down the road. You know how we go into the airport, we see those recycling bins, and you actually look in one, you’re like,

Chris Baran 33:39
oh my goodness, everything. Yeah, and there’s trash in there and everything, you get everything in there, right?

Shane Price 33:47
And as soon as that then gets mixed with the material coming in from a city, you suddenly have the situation where, no, it really, it can’t be recycled, right? And then when you add on the fact that in many cases, the recycling companies who manage the waste own the landfill sites that this goes to, then there’s no incentive to recycle it. You just they’re making money by sending it to landfills. So you’ve got this complicated system, and it is a systems change. I’m with you, and you know, on the residential side, that’s it. That’s a really big one. And it’s not one that I’ve, I’ve looked to tackle, but i It’s fascinating to me that that it continues this, this cycle of in you know, of mismanaged waste management is continuing. It’s surprising.

Chris Baran 34:45
This episode is sponsored by the salon associate accelerator from trainers playbook.com Are you struggling with the time and cost of associate training? Do you feel like your salon is running you? We’ll get your. See it’s on the floor, all with 90% less time from you. So you can get back to building your business. Get the world class design, finishing, color and client care skills they’ll use every day for the rest of their career, while you focus on realizing your vision. Go to trainers playbook.com, and get the salon associate accelerator, and now back to the show. I think people can tell, and you can tell, I’m very intrigued by all of this, and I’m I feel very responsible for all of this as well, and our whole family that I know is always intrigued by, what do we what can we recycle, etc. And I was looking at, in preparation for this, I was just looking at some articles that were written, and I came across one that, you know, we always talk about North America, as opposed to the best of this and the best of that, and the best athletes. We just look at what we got for, for the Olympics, etc. And by the way, yay Canada on what we did. But I found this article, and I’m just reading it right now. And look, I’ve got it down here as part of my research. Was the earth Island Journal said this, that North America is the most wasteful country in the world, yeah,

Shane Price 36:18
and most Yeah, yeah. So for one thing, I’ll tell you this, I’m also a US citizen. So too on the Olympics, yeah, always makes me proud. So, yeah, so I have Canadian and US. So, yeah. So, I mean, I think it’s, this is a fascinating one. Have you ever heard of something called Earth Overshoot Day. No, okay, so it’s going to tie into your, to your, your point right here, but basically that’s the day of the year, Earth Overshoot Day. And in 2024 that was August 2, actually, no, I’m sorry, I think it was August 1. And in 2023 It was August 2. So it’s moved up a day. And in 2020 I think it was August 22 so each year that date is moving up. Okay, that’s the date at which across the globe, humans have extracted more resources. So over fishing, over mining, over farming, over resource extraction, taking land, converting it to deserts. Kind of thing, farmland gets converted to desert. That’s the day of the year that we’ve used an entire year’s worth of resources. So past that day, so let’s say August, 2 of this year. We are now dipping into next year’s resources. Resources. Okay, so to your point. So that’s the global average, Chris, when you look at just the United States, it’s March 14. So when you think about it another way, we use four planets worth of resources in in a year in the United States. So by Mark, by the first quarter, we’ve used one planets with the resources. So I mean, you were 100% right in terms of the consumption side of things. Thankfully, we have infrastructure to manage the waste and deal with it and recycle a lot the rest of the world and other parts of the world, not the rest of the world, but other parts of the world, they don’t have the infrastructure. They create less, but they don’t have the infrastructure. So that’s how you end up with a lot of waste that you might see in the, you know, the Pacific Ocean, where they have that gyre of Yeah, talk about so. So it is a shame, but, but when you hear stats like that, you, I mean, you feel wholly responsible in many ways, for fact that the world is feeling.

Chris Baran 38:52
So here’s my next question, too. How do we reverse that? How do we how do we gain days back? Yeah,

Shane Price 39:00
well, we gained some days back.

Chris Baran 39:04
Or did we ever did? I mean, in this I hear, I heard you say, or I thought I heard you say, every year, that date moves more to January than it does towards

Shane Price 39:13
December. Covid, covid, we had a bit of a shift. That year. We had a bit of a shift. 2020 it was, I don’t remember the exact date, but we did see a bit of a shift. So it’s directly retired. It’s directly started tied to our resource extraction, and therefore directly tied to our consumption. And it directly can tie to transportation into agriculture. And so for if, if, if we have less, um disposable income in our family, and we’re buying less, you’re going to see this trend where it could begin to move the other way. The the the the ticket here, or the to answer your question, yes, we can reverse that 100% but the only way to do it. In my view, and I’m just one person out of the 8.3 whatever, billion people. But the way to do it is you’ve got to take responsibility for your own footprint. That’s it. And it’s really easy. Actually, it’s easy to do it, but, but you have to do it. Yeah, there’s a there’s the book, but it’s written. Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten, kindergarten, that story, and there’s one of the last sort of paragraphs inside that essay, is, you know, if every business and government had a basic operating principle to put things back where they found them and how they found them, imagine the world that we’d be in. And I think the challenge that I’ve it’s the same challenge that I saw sustainability when I started this company. In 2009 people don’t believe that if they take steps, that it’s going to be enough to make a real difference in the world, but actually, that’s the only thing that’s going to make a difference in the world. Yeah, each one of us do it. Yeah. Hear about what John’s doing, or salon Sally salon down the street. It doesn’t matter. Just do what you can, do what you can, and we can do it. And I think this industry could actually lead the world, because how many people do you touch every day inside a salon? Like it’s It blows my mind. Everybody. I mean, not everybody, not everybody can afford it, but the vast majority of people go get their hair cut somewhere, and there’s a conversation it’s had in that chair. Imagine that touch point being the place where those conversations begin. You know, you talk about the butterfly effect. That’s the place that’s, I’m not making this up. We can do it, but we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to start doing it and stop talking about it. You know,

Chris Baran 41:41
you know, you you’re just bringing me right back, and I’m gonna apologize right now to the world simply because I was doing a program this last weekend. And as you know, but if I’m having a bottle of water or whatever, yeah, the first thing I ask is, do you recycle? And I’m not blaming the salon on this or anything I’m taking this totally on myself, is that I, I put it in the trash and and the point was, is they said that you, they said to me, the the city does not recycle business waste, or they won’t take business recycling. Yeah, so that was their that was the reason. And I went and what I should have said, Look at Hey, I’m doing, I’m doing a podcast, like, literally, the day after I get home, you should check this out. And I did not. That’s why I’m apologizing to you, and I am going to give them a call as soon as I get off this to tell them about this. But my thought was, you know, if I was that salon owner, and if they’re not taking my business, I could just go home and take that stuff to my home, put it in my home recycling, and I could take responsibility, not over from my home, but my business. That’s

Shane Price 42:53
correct. That’s correct. If the city will take those streams of whatever the city can take, take it home. Take it home. Yeah, Like Put, put your plastic bottles in the recycling at home, if you have access to it, never throw anything into garbage. That is, like, it’s not even it’s the thing. This is what’s interesting. So one of the largest, and I think this ties into, I know I go on tangents, Chris, you can pull me right down to earth by going into just like does Shane stop talk, get in here so. But one of the largest studies of its kind ever done, post covid was carried out in 2023 and what they looked at in 2022 I’m sorry, what they looked at was, what is the global sentiment on sustainability, and how are people feeling? And the it’s the largest one ever carried out on the US side. A couple of questions were asked that are really important, and one is around around recycling and waste. And what came of that was 94% of Americans believe that recycling is good for the planet. So it doesn’t matter what you believe, like what your beliefs are, your religious, your spiritual, what? 94% that’s that’s nine. That’s a rounding error. That’s 10. Out of 10 people think recycling is good for the planet. 85% of people believe that the companies they support with their dollars, they’re voting with their dollars. Ought to be recycling at the very minimum, right? So this is at the heart of what you’re talking about. People want this to happen. Doesn’t matter what their belief is, recycling is good. It’s a good thing. We want to continue using resources that are already in circulation, not extracting new ones wherever possible. And so I think that’s an important thing for people to consider, like this, isn’t this? Is this? One’s a no brainer. I get kinds of different conversations happening around climate change and around, you know, these sorts of topics, and I think those are really rich and meaningful conversations that need to be had. And. Um, so, yeah.

Chris Baran 45:03
So you know, this is I’m gonna, I’m calling this person I don’t have, I can’t do it right after this call, but I will doing doing it tonight or tomorrow. And because this person that I was just at, I was and also they’re a friend of mine as well as a they, they have me come in to teach there, but I, I want to talk to them. So how, what do I tell them? Like, I’m sure that people that are listening to this, etc, are going to go, okay, good. Well, if I want to jump in, what do I do? How do I do? What is it? Is there a cost involved? What do I do? Simple or hard position for me to do?

Shane Price 45:34
Sure, sure. No. I mean, I think, you know, the thing that we want salons to think about is there’s probably about, you know, between five and 10 different activities that they can do in their salon, and depending on their interest in having a positive impact, will determine, you know, what of those five to 10 they want to do. I think fundamentally, the most important thing that they can do is to stop sending any of the packaging waste or any chemical waste down the sink, or any of that hair, and any of that should not be going landfill. So this is an easy solve. I just want

Chris Baran 46:08
to stop you for a second there. You said something that’s really, really important, and I love that you brought that up. Is you said down the sink, correct? Because I think when people think of it like a good I can display. I remember doing a program where we had all of your, all of your the boxes and your disposable bags, etc, and we put everything away. And I remember putting that stuff in there going, and I went, Well, if we’re not putting it in there, it’s and I’m not recycling, it’s going into our water, right,

Shane Price 46:39
correct, yeah. And there’s the and, I mean, if you look at to be quite honest, and this is not to scare people, this is just a reality in it, yeah, not anything in base to worry so much about. But like, even in Toronto, legally that, like commercial businesses, including salons, are not allowed to rinse the stuff down the sink. It’s just not when you look at the regulation and then you apply it overlaid over salon. The regulation applies. You can’t do it there. There are significant fines for doing it. But we businesses do it’s a part of business. It’s a part of doing that. So you know, you’re, I think what you want to know is, what can you possibly do with this? Yeah, so it’s not going down our sinks and making its way into our rivers, lakes, oceans. So green circle collects that material, and we have it fractionally distillated. That means we separate out the oil from the water content, and oil content can be used by the processor to run the machinery in the system that actually interests this process, and the water can be neutralized in the salt and water, because you neutralize it and it can go right back into the the wastewater grid as part of that fractional distillation process. There is a component that comes off that there’s, there’s nothing you can do with it. It is a it would be considered your organic waste molecules, the things that you know, let’s call it lead acetate or tar based molecules, stuff like that that does not break down in the environment, that gets rid of, and it has to be getting gotten rid of, in a very specific way. And so we work with a processor that helps us to achieve that, so that we’re not sending anything into our wastewater that could contaminate other than salt and pure water that goes back into them.

Chris Baran 48:30
Wow, yeah, I mean, it’s just, and sorry if I think I disrupted your flow. There no, no talking about water, but it was, you know, it is, I think there is this, all this stuff that’s going back into this stream water or into the landfill, that we could do something about that. And when, in our conversation we just had before, you said something that there was a there is a date when all of the landfills, I can’t know what you said, but 2030 2030 give us a little bit more on that. Yes, I

Shane Price 49:06
mean, there are, I’m gonna say, Oh my gosh. How many landfill sites across the United States? 200 to 50 plus landfill sites across the US, and they are slated to be at capacity by 2030 there’s a small margin of them that will be that they are actually carving out and creating extra space. But the question is, what do we do with all these resources? When those landfill sites are full, we create more, certainly, but it there. There doesn’t, doesn’t seem to be any significant plans to manage beyond 2030 in terms of that waste, waste to energy may be an option incineration, but at that point, you know, then you were, you know, we have other other potential issues related to waste to energy and incineration that that has to be considered.

Chris Baran 49:57
Wow, you know. And. Is, and I realize we’re really focusing on the beauty industry, but I think from a planetary aspect, I saw an article just on TV. I think it was this last year sometime, but it stuck out in my brain that there are some other countries exact, exact name of them. I don’t remember, but I know it was in third world countries where some of the men, the clothing manufacturers, they take all of its brand new clothing, but they can’t get rid of it, so they just send this to this big dump, and they showed people in it that it’s it to me. I know could have been two to three story tall, and I don’t know how much area it covered, but it was all just brand new clothing that’s left, just left there to go bad. Yeah, and it’s just, I find that is, if we have this head in the sand theory for too long, you know, this is what I think it’s we’ve had it for so long. I think it’s actually that is what’s we’re going to be the own disruption of our own planet here. If we don’t, you know, get off, pardon my language, get off our ass and do something about it. No,

Shane Price 51:03
I mean, I definitely use that language once or twice a day. And you know, I mean, I think you’re right. I I’m a big fan, you know, for the Canadians out there, you’ll recognize the name Americans, you may not. He’s maybe not as well known in the US, but a gentleman named David Suzuki.

Chris Baran 51:19
Oh yeah, yeah. David, the,

Shane Price 51:21
the the nature of things. He, you know, the David Suzuki foundation. He’s, he’s sort of an iconic Canadian environmentalist. And you know, one of the most profound things I’ve, I ever heard him say was that, you know, the thing that makes us unique as a human is our ability to think into the future, see what’s coming and course correct, to be able to survive like this is a thing this. This is what’s made us successful as a species of amongst all of the species in the world, right? And why today? Interestingly, why is it today that we’re not able to see what’s coming down the pipeline, so to speak for us, and why aren’t we course correcting fast enough? And, you know, there’s all, I mean, there’s all kinds of theories about that as to why that’s happening, but it’s in our genetic code to solve these problems and do it quick. The challenge is we’re just, yeah, we’re just not moving fast enough. I believe in humanity and our ability to create the change that’s needed, but, but as you say, we have to, we have to take it seriously. We have to get off our ass, and we have to take responsibility. And I, and I, you know, maybe, maybe the piece here is, I think we’re so, we so lose hope because of all the different things we hear in the media every day that we’re up against, yeah, and, you know, you can’t, you can’t blame people for feeling that way. I certainly there’s days where you wake me like, Well, geez. Like, is it possible that we really are facing this type of thing again, you know? But the only thing we can do, and if we want to make change, and I believe we can, is we have to start taking action and get off our asses.

Chris Baran 52:59
Yeah, you know, there’s, I don’t I’m not going to get into, nor do I want to get into the political game of what’s going on right now. I want to take it from my my point is, is that when i Everybody has a belief, you know, and I hear, you know? And this is the part that I think is really killing the point of difference that everybody has in the world. And I think everybody’s always had one, but I think it’s the cause driven piece that you have, you know. And I think we know that when you see people that are cause driven by either faith or politics or or what your genuine belief is, and if they tap into the brain, they say your prefrontal cortex lights up because of that’s anything that’s cause driven that you really believe in, that lights up that part of your brain, and you will make decisions totally based on that. And with all due respect to people that are out there, and I know I have a couple friends that are this way that it’s and I call it my label, not anybody else’s adjust me attitude. And what would you say to those people that have just me and they they don’t believe in recycling, and they’ll say, Oh, well, that’s just a pick it out if somebody said that to serve but it’s not really true.

Shane Price 54:17
Yeah.

Chris Baran 54:18
What would you say to them? I

Shane Price 54:19
think, I think that’s a great question. You know, I sometimes you might, you might look at it and say, Well, have you ever, have you ever traveled to a place where people did not have nearly as much as we have here? Like so when I was, I was probably like 26 or something. I I went to Peru, I got I had a summer job, I saved some money, I went to Peru, and I remember going to, like, the the favelas or the really tough parts of Peru,

Chris Baran 54:56
just once you get out of the airport, is what exactly

Shane Price 54:58
in Lehman’s. I’ve

Chris Baran 55:00
been there, and I know, I It’s a there’s a line, and you see where you have nothing, and then you have everything,

Shane Price 55:06
exactly. And you take, you know, take a bus to like Cusco and places like that. And on the way, on Route, you see these little sort of shanty towns, or 1010, building places where, I tell you, I looked at the kids and I thought, Oh, these, these are the happiest kids I’ve ever seen, so happy. Like, incredible. I love this. Like, what an amazing thing. And, and I thought at that time, you know, like, and they have so little, you know, when you look at it, they might use 40 liters of water a day on average, the average household, and you look at the average household in the United States using, you know, 500 liters a day. And you think, like, like, you we have to, you said it, Chris, you actually said, you know, there’s this i mentality, and I think mentality. And if we can, if we could just get out of that for a moment and look around the world outside of how we live. It would humble us a little bit, at least enough, to know that it isn’t, it isn’t as things always seem. Life is not really, or should it be as convenient as we tend to live today. And I think anybody you know, the people it’s so interesting you say it, let’s remove the politics, the people that I’ve met that typically in this industry, that get it right away, or that seek us out, or the people who have had struggles in their lives. They said, You know what? Like, I have these conversations with people like, you know, I had to work my ass off to get this job at this place, and then, and then this happened, and that happened, and I prevailed. And it’s like, yeah, you know what? Grit builds human character, and the people who don’t give a shit about the stuff that we deal with every day, the reality of maybe the impact we’re having, I mean, and the impact is far scarier than what we’re talking about. We’re not really at the heart of the matter in terms of the media and the way it’s presented. We’re not even close. But if you speak to those people, and it’s like you haven’t lived, you haven’t been out there, you haven’t worked for what you’ve got. And I’ll stand behind that. I mean, I you know, I think, I think there’s something there, and people have to stop and recognize that it is. It’s not the we movement. It’s just we got to take responsibility, because at what point in in in the history of business did we turn the corner and say, I can serve my community in this regard, but in this regard I could destroy my community. And I think that’s a problem if you just are operating for the pure revenue and profit, but not considering what is the true cost of what I’m doing. This is a problem, and I think the future is going to be about true cost. You know, when you when a side note, our forests perform colossal life giving services to us every day, the annual cost of the services they provide is about two and a half trillion dollars. We never think about that in our people consider, if we had to, what would the cost of a haircut be? Yeah, right.

Chris Baran 58:16
It’s interesting. I just had this conversation about a with a salon owner that always said she she, she said she always pretended she knew what a PNL was, and it wasn’t till they she got her feet held to the fire that she went. I need to learn what this is. Would it be interesting if we could do a PNL? Yeah, on recycling,

Shane Price 58:38
I would. I would love to do that. I would love to you’re speaking to a project that’s near and dear to my heart. I would love to be able to you know when we say that that $2.5 trillion life giving services, cleaning our air, water, soil, that trees do for free every day, we and we have no technology to do that at scale today, the nerds have figured it out right, like it’s $2.5 trillion but we can’t do it at scale if we had to pay for it, though, that’s the price tag. I’d love to know the beauty industry in North America and Canada, the United States and South America, Europe. Of that 2.5 trillion, what’s the contribution to the beauty industry? Yeah. And look at, look at the P L from that perspective, and say, if we want to be net neutral in our impact, so when we perform our services, we leave the air as it was, we leave the water as it was, we leave the soil as it was. What’s the cost of a haircut or a hair color, or something like that? Yeah, I think that would give us some great insight into more levers in terms of making change, yeah, and more power, just power like you’re pointing to it.

Chris Baran 59:47
Yeah, I, you know, I one thing. I think we’ve been talking about some stuff in here, that’s number one, really interesting to some could be really scary. Sure, if you could give us a positive note. To kind of wrap up with, what would that be? And I wanted, because I do think the positive point is number one is to join green circle salons. That’s number one. But what would you say? What’s the positive about with we all do this?

Shane Price 1:00:14
Yeah, so I mean, the positive is we can get the future that we want, and I believe that the positive is everything that’s happening around us, around most issues, and I’m speaking around sustainability, it’s within our own power to make that difference. It’s a it’s a choice that we have. It isn’t what’s happening out in the news and in the world. It’s simply just a choice that we have. And yeah, to me, that’s empowering, right? If we pick up the torch and say, Listen, this one matters. This one counts. Because when I’m talking to my grandkids and, you know, 1520, years or five years from now, you know, I they’re gonna ask me, what did you do on your watch make a difference? And I think we have the ability to give a really good answer. And I do believe wholeheartedly, and I’ve always felt this, that this industry can be the industry that can lead all industries to change. I really do. There’s so much potential here, and it’s such a wonderful industry. It makes people look and feel beautiful. Imagine that drive that message home, that we got to keep our planet beautiful too. It’s really simple. We can do it together. That helps. I don’t know how inspiring that is, Chris, but

Chris Baran 1:01:40
no, I think it is because I, you know, I’m just even thinking we just did, we were doing programs, and we had a whole bunch of people over here cutting hair and mannequins, yeah, and we threw it all in the garbage. And I kept saying, Why didn’t I just call you to get one of those boxes and bags, and I could have sent that? Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, that’s going to be the next thing on my list there, bud. So listen, I’m going to hold you to that that I I would, I like you want to get as much of this information. When you have that new information that’s out there that’s coming up, let me know. I want to have you back on here. And I just, I want to say, this is, if you could have one wish, one wish for our industry, what would that be?

Shane Price 1:02:25
I think our industry has incredible potential and so much power to make change, but to do that, that takes courage. It doesn’t encourage before confidence to do it. It takes the courage, and then once you take a step, you get a bit of confidence, and you to take another step, and so on. But I think the courage, and my wish is that this industry has the courage to embrace their own power. It’s the scariest thing, because then you’re taking ownership. It’s the scariest thing we can do, but I believe it is a thing that unlocks the future of our industry. I really do believe it we can. We’re gonna get there, or we gotta get there like this, yeah, and deal with a lot of pain, or we can get there like this and remove the pain. And I just think, well, courage is courage is key. Yeah,

Chris Baran 1:03:22
I agree with what you said. We’re like your movements either going to happen slow or it can happen fast. And how much put way into us, but how much we put into this? Shane, how do people get where can they go? Because I know people can listen to this. They want to sign up right away. Where do they go?

Shane Price 1:03:37
Green circle salons.com. That’s our website. We’re on all the social media channels, so Instagram, Facebook, I think we have a Tiktok account. I think so if people don’t let me near our social media channels in our company, because they just know better. But yeah, those are the that’s how they’d find us, and they can give us a call, check us out online, give us a call or email us. We’d love to help you and support you. And it’s a journey, and we’re we have an amazing team. I mean, what’s important here I haven’t mentioned is the incredible team that supports green circle, that is green circle, and they’d love to help you. Yeah,

Chris Baran 1:04:17
Shane, I just want to say thank you so much, because I’ve been so insightful, and it’s a near and dear to my heart thing as well. So I just want to thank you for everything that you do for all of us and your team and your company. So I just want to say from the bottom of heart, thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on here.

Shane Price 1:04:34
Thank you, Chris for that. It means a lot to me, and I look forward to seeing you and having a drink with you at some point in the very near future. And thank you for giving us the stage to share the story of green circle. Great,

Chris Baran 1:04:47
absolutely. Thank you. And I just have to say to our listeners, I mean, I know you love this one, and if you like, if you like what you heard today, just, and if you want more, just, you know, go on to whatever platform that is and just give us a review on there so that we can. Connect with more people, etc. And you know, Shane, once again, thank you. And my name is Chris Baran, and I want to thank all of you for being on headcases. Amazing work. You.