City's Super Recycler recycling hair to soak up oil spill

Instead of scooping up hair clippings and throwing them in the trash, Carlton Hair International Hair Salon has started donating them to help soak up oil spills. About a week ago, the salon, located in the Shops at Mission Viejo, joined an effort that could possibly help contain a leak spewing from an underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico.

The hair the salon generates will be picked up weekly and is expected to be used to create rags to soak up oil spills.

Recycling hair isn’t the only thing salon manager Nazzi Karimi is pushing. In fact, from hair product bottles to magazines, the stylists and custodians at Carlton Hair recycle almost everything they generate. The tremendous effort has earned Carlton Hair the “Super Recycler of the Quarter” award. The shop will receive $125 worth of Simon gift cards for working to reduce its carbon footprint.

The program was launched last year by Simon Property Group, the City and Waste Management of Orange County at The Shops at Mission Viejo in an effort to encourage shop tenants to recycle. To qualify for the award, tenants must utilize the mall-wide recycling program for recyclables generated within their store. Tenants who break down their boxes and recycle their shrink wrap are considered for the award. Internal recycling programs such as e-waste and beverage container recycling are also considered. The Super Recycler is selected based on interviews with store managers by the City’s recycling consultant, EcoNomics, Inc., and by periodic site visits to the mall’s trash enclosures to assess the stores’ participation in the recycling program.

Carlton certainly exemplifies the program. The shop refrains from purchasing any item that is packaged in non-recyclable materials. Store personnel use glassware to serve clients beverages and use reusable cloth towels when cleaning the salon rather than paper towels. Basically, the only thing Carlton tosses in the trash is foil pieces from hair-dyeing procedures and other such products that are covered in chemicals and can’t be recycled.

Coldwater Creek and Forever 21 received honorable mentions for the first quarter 2010 recycling efforts. Both stores’ staff consistently broke down their cardboard boxes, bagged and recycled their shrink-wrap, and kept their recycling out of the trash compactors.