As a company that encourages others to walk the sustainability walk, we know how important it is to have clear sustainability policies and goals, and to communicate them clearly.

So this is our Green Salon Sustainability Manifesto.

PLANET

Green Salon had plans to become a Net Zero business by 2035 but in 2024 we are shifting our business model from a small consultancy to a larger e-commerce site which will have a material impact on our emissions. We calculate our Scope 1, 2 and office supply carbon emissions through SME Climate Hub. Because we are a service-based company and do not manufacture or sell any products, our supply side emissions are relatively small. We double offset any emissions that we can not currently reduce through Just Carbon who fund nature regeneration projects. JustCarbon Removal (JCR) tokens are certified by the CCBA (Climate, Community and Biodiversity Association), a Verra programme, to ensure all carbon removal projects are beneficial to the community and biodiversity in the project’s locality.

As Green Salon is run out of our founder’s home, her plan is to make her home Net Zero by 2030. (We are using the definition of Net Zero as when you have reduced your carbon emissions by 90% and you off-set the remaining emissions). The Green Salon home office runs on renewable electricity supplied by Good Energy, a company that supplies 100% renewable energy. It is also heated by gas through Good Energy, 10% of which is biogas. Before changing to an electrically run heating system, the home office is being fully insulated to minimise its heating energy requirements.

The supply chain to our home office is as green as possible. To stock the office, we only buy from brands that are B-Corp, have the Positive Luxury Butterfly Mark or score 50% or over on the Green Salon sustainability assessment. We buy our stationery from a green office supplier, our mobile phone provider is Honest Mobile, which offsets its emissions twice, and in 2024 we are emigrating our website to Krystal, a green web host. We all bike, walk or take public transport as much as possible.

We are careful to conserve water, and use a Guppy bag to prevent microfibres from leaving our washing machines. When eating at the Green Salon office, we buy food from organic and regenerative farms, and buy fish locally and seasonally. Most meals are vegetarian, with a vegan option, and we infrequently eat meat, and buy only high welfare chicken and pasture-fed organic beef and lamb.

PEOPLE

We are a small team of passionate women who work on a freelance basis. Green Salon pays above the minimum wage and pays within a week of being invoiced. We are an inclusive company, and we take regular brain breaks and rest periods so that we stay well and happy. We believe in yoga, dance and movement, and we do a little happy dance each time a brand proves that it is truly committed to sustainability and scores over 50% on our Directory!

Each of us volunteers for an environmental cause or charity, as part of our commitment to helping the planet. And we empower women, and each other, by celebrating our talents and our creativity. As we all work on a freelance basis we work around our childcare if we have children in our lives.

ANIMALS

The home and office supplies we buy are certified cruelty-free, and we only buy meat from butchers that make sure that the meat they source comes from animals that have lived happy, comfortable and healthy lives and have been pasture-fed. We mainly buy wild fish, which is fished seasonally and locally.

BUSINESS

We are currently working with Relativ Impact to assess our broader impact from our coaching, workshops and the Green Salon Directory. We’re obsessed with the concepts of durability, reusability and circularity, seeing buying less, and buying better as a way of slowing down the damage of over-production and over-consumption. We buy second-hand where possible, and will pay more for better quality products when we need them. Where we need to replenish products, like cleaning products, store produce and beauty products, we use circular companies, to minimise our waste.

We donate 5% of our revenue from the Green Salon Directory via Work for Good to TreeSisters, a charity that is reforesting the tropics, where trees suck up 30% more carbon dioxide and symbolises for us the regenerative power of people - in this case, women - when they put their mind to a task. We have so far donated over £700 and planted 1,793 trees.

We see ourselves as change-makers, championing other businesses that are striving to balance profit and purpose in a way that gives back to the world rather than takes from it. We strive to be as transparent as possible in the way that we run our company, and in our vision, our ethics and our sustainability. We, like everyone, are not perfect, and like everyone else never will be, but we are aiming for our North Star of kindness, compassion and change that helps heal not only the planet but, in doing so, ourselves.