Wednesday April 22 is Earth Day. I am thankful for a designated day when people all over the world put in extra effort to clean up the beaches and highways, and donate to water conservation. Humans are responsible for mass-pollution, and we need to take responsibility for our actions. It is so important that we do what we can, wherever we can, to protect and conserve our environment. You can read The Importance Of Eco-Friendly Environment here.

Rooted Wellness + Beauty Collective, LLC, takes pride in the fact that we celebrate Earth Day all year long. Salons are a hot-spot for more than hot hair...they have a HUGE impact on pollution. EarthWise stated in their Blog Post, "The environmental impacts of hair salons," that "Hair salons have a certain fragrance. You always know when you’re in one. No surprise, since nearly 5000 chemicals are listed as products for hair care, including 3300 synthetic compounds. Beyond the shampoo and conditioner, there are hair dyes, oils, propellants, and various sprays to keep hair in place." That is why I take all the precautions I can, to have a low-waste, eco-friendly salon. Read on to see 10+ ways RWBC achieves this...

1. Reduced Plastic Use

When getting the necessary supplies, furniture, and décor for the salon, I avoided plastic at all costs, that even means if it costed me more. Look around the studio, and you will notice almost everything made from metal, wood, fabric and other sustainable materials, but not much from plastic if I could help it. This includes everything from glass mixing bowls, wooden hair-color brushes, metal, wood and fabric boxes and containers.

2. Products Made With Wind-Power, Recycled Packaging, and are Recyclable

Neuma, which is one of my lines, uses only environmentally responsible ingredients, in 95% post consumer soft touch bottles that start as recycled milk jugs, they promote paperless operations using only 100% post-consumer recycled materials and are 100% Certified Wind Power Offset. My other hair product line, All-Nutrient, is Rainforest Certified, uses raw ingredient harvesting which preserves and promotes the future growth of the environment where the materials are harvested. They ensure full transparency, traceability and quality of their ingredients by collaborating with world-leading green suppliers. They are free of petroleum-derived materials and harmful toxins and come in recyclable packaging. Products from my own personal collection come in glass or recycled paper packaging. My Makeup line is packaged in all eco-friendly, recycled paper and plastic containers or glass and are printed with non-toxic inks.

3. No Artificial Fragrances, All Natural Ingredients, No Animal Testing and No Carcinogens

RWBC has a strong policy on only carrying lines free of carcinogens, synthetic fragrance, or materials, and will not allow products tested on animals. Our products reduce the exposure to pesticides, unnecessary chemicals, and synthetic fertilizers. Certified through PETA, my hair and skin care is 100% vegan and cruelty-free. There are no sulfates, gluten, parabens, formaldehyde, MEA, DEA, triclosans, propylene glycol, phthalates, heavy metals, toxic materials, pesticides, fungicides or herbicides, talc, toulene, or other harmful ingredients. There is little or no worry of hair, skin, or air pollution with these products. They do everything they can to reduce or eliminate their carbon footprint.

4. Recycled Material, Bio-degradable Trash-bags

As I said, I source products that are made from recycled Material, but I do not limit those ethics to only hair or skin care products. Everything I use, including my trash bags are thoughtfully picked before I decide to use them. I could spend little money on cheap trash bags, but it is worth it to us to pay top-dollar for even garbage bags (that no one until now even knows I am using) that are made from recycled material and are bio-degradable.

5. Product Refill Program

Rooted Wellness + Beauty Collective, LLC offers an incentive to bring back your bottles (of select products) to be refilled at a reduced price. This saves both of us money, and prevents more bottles from being used or discarded of.

6. Recycled Gift-bags and Cotton balls

We are committed to not using plastic bags, unless they are upcycled. Some times we use fabric jaw-string bags, recycled Kraft paper or upcycled gift bags for shopping bags. Our cotton balls we use for gel-polish removals are either purchased as organic cotton, or are upcycled from opened supplement containers.

7. Reusable Nail Tools

Instead of using the common tin-foil wraps for gel-polish removals, we use reusable jaw clamps. We also use a crystal-file that can be cleaned, sanitized and re-used over and over. Another method RWBC uses is keeping nail-clients files or buffers in a designated bag that gets used on only them and can be used again on them at following appointments.

8. Non-toxic Sanitation

Mostly all salons use an extremely harsh chemical called Barbicide to sanitize their tools. Not us. We clean our tools in all natural soap, dry them off and place them under a UV lamp which sanitizes or sterilizes them. In fact it is even more effective then using the chemical. A bonus, it also saves money, which helps me keep my costs lower for you, especially being that a specialty organic salon and holistic healing studio usually can charge top-dollar.

9. Recycling Of All Packaging Materials

Any packaging that comes in from suppliers gets recycled. This includes those thin plastic bags. They get collected and once we have enough they are taken in to Metro Market's plastic bag recycling collection box.