Lean & Green AWARDS 2009: Acorn Organic Salon: Beautifying People and the Environment

While beauty salons generally focus exclusively on clients' beauty, Acorn Organic Salon in Dover also works to protect the beauty of the environment The one-year-old Dover-based salon, which recently expanded to include manicures and pedicures, incorporates sustainability into everything it does. While it might look silly to put Shaw's bags on customers' heads for hair colorings instead of specially-bought ones, customers and the environment are prettier as a result, and that's the exact message founders Allison Degan and Laura MacKay want to send: It's easy, and also profitable, to be green.

Salons are normally toxic places, with the smell of ammonia and other chemicals used for hair and nail treatment evident the moment you walk in the door. Not Acorn. It uses only organic products. While the cost is higher - organic hair color is $16 a treatment versus $14 for traditional products - the difference is small and made up in other ways. For instance, people with chemical sensitivities often can't visit traditional salons, and staff is regularly exposed to the chemicals used there. "I was shocked at the toxicity levels of products we use every day," says Degan, who got the idea for the salon based on her young daughter's chemical sensitivity. "You notice the difference in smell here right away. Customers mention it."

Degan and MacKay say the thing they like best about their salon is the sense of community between themselves, their three employees and customers. Customers bring in shopping bags and other items for reuse, including magazines, as the salon has no subscriptions to reduce wasted paper. Signs on the walls inform customers of the salon's various green measures. That sense of community brings regulars from Manchester, Nashua and other places, says MacKay. "I think reuse is the part of recycling people forget." MacKay says.