When Dunedin hairdresser Amanda Buckingham started a journey to reduce waste in her salon a few years ago, she found when it came to colouring hair there was no way to avoid using aluminium foil or plastic. Determined to find a more sustainable option, Buckingham got to work and created Paper Not Foil, a reusable and recyclable paper alternative made from ground-down industrial waste.
Buckingham, who has been cutting hair for 28 years, says she realised her industry had a problem when she looked through her salon's rubbish bins to see what waste they could reduce or reuse. After discovering her salon threw out around 1.5 kilometres of used foil each month, it dawned on her the environmental impact hair colouring must be having on a global scale.
Because so little foil is recycled - Buckingham estimates less than 10 percent, with the rest going to landfill - she started looking for a more sustainable product.
"I just kept thinking to myself, man there's got to be something else that we could buy that was less detrimental, [and] easier to be recycled or reused."
After searching around for a more environmentally friendly way to colour hair and coming up empty, she took it upon herself to fill the gap.
It was while preparing her children's lunches one evening that she had the flash of inspiration that would eventually lead to Paper Not Foil.
"I was at home wrapping up my girls' school lunches with baking paper. And that's the lightbulb moment where I thought, 'hold on a second, maybe paper is easier to dispose of or can be disposed of more efficiently.'"
After experimenting - unsuccessfully - on her own using baking paper to colour hair, she headed down to Otago Polytechnic to pitch her idea to their innovation hub and seek professional help in realising her goal.
"I said to them, I think our industry needs to change and I want to make a foil that is better for the environment," she says.
Five years later, with the support of scientists from Otago Polytechnic, as well as a Callahan Innovation grant, her idea became a reality.
Paper Not Foil is made from industrial waste - primarily offcuts of bricks, tiles and marble from the building industry - meaning no trees are felled to make the paper. The waste is then ground down into a fine powder of calcium carbonate.
"It's then reformulated with a degradable food resin and that's what makes it strong so salons can put it in the washing machine or hand wash it and get several uses out of it before they dispose of it," says Buckingham.
Once it's been cleaned, the product can be recycled as either paper or soft plastic, and if it does end up going into landfill, Buckingham says because it's essentially made of stone, it breaks down entirely without any toxins.
The product launched in the New Zealand and Australian markets around six years ago, and after gaining international interest expanded into Europe around three years ago. It is currently available in 12 countries across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australasia.
Because it can be used multiple times, Buckingham says the paper often ends up being cheaper for salons than using traditional foils, although she admits the paper strips can take a little getting used to for hairdressers.
"The technique is different, but in the end it is a lot simpler and quicker…once people adapt to them they absolutely love them," she says.
Buckingham says she believes the popularity of the product is a sign of the increased awareness salons have of the need to reduce their environmental footprint.
"Sustainability, in general, is becoming more of a need rather than a fad or a trend and you can see it within the industry, where things are changing and people are searching for an alternative that is better - especially around reusability and recycling and being cleaner and greener."
And while Buckingham says she has dreams of inventing more products in the future to help foster sustainability, for the time being she's still taking things one step at a time and is happy working to make Paper Not Foil the "preferred choice" for hair colouring in salons across New Zealand and overseas.
This article was created for Dell.
