It’s been over 8 months since we first met at Evergreen Brickworks, when our minds were still racing with excitement over all the possible directions that we could take our project in. It didn’t take long for us to realize that our goal of developing a personalized business case and pursuing it would be unattainable in such a short time frame (see Challenges article).
Trying not to feel discouraged with the lack of responses that we were receiving (which was zero), we decided to modify our goal and our search. We ended up finding the already environmentally conscious Karen, owner of Salon de Elephant – a Green Circles’ certified salon.
With our new goal and a company on board, we started our planning process once again. We met up with Karen, asked her about her company’s sustainable goals, and came up with several projects that we could help her initiate. We originally planned of providing training sessions for employees to teach them about the salon’s current initiatives and working on consistent branding for the company on their website and social media platforms. Karen was also thrilled to take this opportunity to test out natural hair dyes and hair gels.
Once again, it seemed like we were overly ambitious with our plans. The hair dyes and gel weren’t as successful as we’d hoped, and our training session didn’t go as planned. Instead, interviewed Karen and her employees, and we ran a small model event to collect pictures to showcase on the Salon’s social media outlets.
Was our project a failure, then?
Although our goals have changed numerous times over the course of this project, it’s safe to say that in some ways we did succeed.
Our original plans didn’t go as well as we hoped, so we went back to our drawing board, and ended up introducing a recycling program for the Salon’s clients using TerraCycle’s zero-waste beauty packaging boxes.
And once we realized that our project was turning into a zero-waste project, we decided to take on a couple other mini projects. We got more TerraCycle zero-waste boxes for candy wrappers and handed them off at our municipality partner’s office as well as Lindt’s head office. We also created zero-waste care packages for women in need, providing explanations on their benefits.
Our recycling programs are successfully in all locations. This picture shows the box filled up over 50% at the municipality’s office just one month after being set up. And our salon has been promoting the new program on Instagram, and customers have been bringing in their products.
These past few months have taught us the tough reality of trying to sell sustainability to businesses. We learned that the process is extremely long, and patience and problem-solving are key ingredients in successfully implementing projects.