New salon: Pia North’s new venture Rowe Street Co will be fully environmentally sustainable.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
A new hair salon has opened in Shepparton, and it’s introducing some new sustainability features to the community.
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Rowe Street Co is the first salon in Shepparton to be fully environmentally sustainable.
Pia North, owner of the new salon, has been a hairdresser for 17 years, and has run her own home salon for the past decade.
Last year, she decided now was the right time to open her own salon, and over the past year, she and her husband have been building out the space to open it up to clients and hairdressers in 2024.
The co-working space will be able to host up to eight hairdressers, with Ms North saying two are already signed on to start in February.
As someone who lives sustainably at home, Ms North thought joining the Sustainable Salons movement was the right choice for her business.
“No-one else in Shepparton is a Sustainable Salon, but I follow people in Melbourne who are,” she said.
Salon quality: The co-working salon has space for up to eight hairdressers, allowing for more clients.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Sustainability first: All hair sweepings will be repurposed by Sustainable Salons.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Sustainable Salons is an organisation that services all kinds of salons across Australia and New Zealand, including hair, barber, beauty, dermal and pet industries.
They supply salons with specific bins for the waste, which can be collected fortnightly or on demand.
“They take pretty much 95 per cent of our waste, including all of the hair sweepings,” Ms North said.
“If the hair is long enough, it will get donated for wigs, but the rest of the hair gets swept up, and they come and collect it.”
These hair sweepings collected from the salons can then be used in a variety of sustainable ways, with the most common use being hair booms.
Hair booms can be used as an alternative to synthetic booms and chemical dispersants when treating coastal oil spills.
Hair sweepings from salons, barbers and pet groomers are stuffed into nylon stockings and deployed along coastal oil spills as an organic alternative to soak up the oil.
Sustainable Salons say a standard broom can soak up to four litres of oil and can be drained and reused up to two more times.
As well as hair, Ms North said Sustainable Salons collects and recycles ponytails for wigs, metals, plastics, paper, sharps, disposables, razors, tools, chemicals and more.
“We don’t tip any chemicals down the drain,” she said.
“We’ve got a bucket that we scrape everything off into, and they take that back as well.”
The chemical waste is then neutralised to be reused as recycled water, which can be used in various ways.
They accept chemicals such as peroxides and developers, colour solutions, perm liquid, acetone, tanning solution and straightening liquid.
The co-working salon is having a soft opening as they continue to set up the shop, with just Ms North taking clients at the moment.
But she says by February 1 they will be fully open for business, with two hairdressers starting.
Rowe Street Co is located at 35 Rowe St, Shepparton.
To book an appointment, you can text Pia on 0422 769 557 or head to the Rowe Street Co’s Facebook or Instagram for more details.
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