Sally Beauty prepares for a green New Year

A leading specialty beauty retailer is putting environmental consciousness on its list of New Year’s resolutions.

Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. is launching “SBH Going Green,” a company-wide effort intended to reduce the company's environmental impact by reducing waste and energy usage throughout its stores, supply chain and headquarters. Starting in 2020, Sally Beauty, CosmoProf, and corporate-owned Armstrong McCall stores will discontinue the use of plastic bags, instead offering their customers a choice between paper bags and reusable bags made from recycled materials, in each case available for a small fee.  

Sally Beauty estimates that this effort alone will eliminate more than 104 million plastic bags from landfills per year. In addition, the retailer is committing to removing all instances of Styrofoam from its operations, leading to an initial reduction of 300,000 pieces from landfills in the first year. Finally, corporate headquarters has launched a cardboard recycling program in an effort to recycle five to seven tons of cardboard per year. Together, these changes will contribute to an estimated $2-$3 million in annual savings.

"Sally Beauty is committed to a top-down transformation.  Making our operations more sustainable helps our communities and our business," said Aaron Alt, president of Sally Beauty Supply. "Our customer base wants to see a more environmentally-friendly Sally, and we're proud of the plan we've developed to get us there."

Sally Beauty has already been progressing with cleaner product development and sourcing efforts. All finished owned-brand products are already “cruelty-free,” and more than half are vegan. The company plans to have at least 80% of its owned-brand products become vegan by the end of fiscal year 2021. Earlier in 2019, the retailer also launched an energy management pilot program in 64 stores that resulted in a 34$ reduction in energy per store. 

Based on the success of the program, Sally Beauty will be implementing the energy conservation plan in additional stores over the next three years, targeting locations with the highest energy usage.

Through the Sally Beauty Supply and Beauty Systems Group businesses, the company sells and distributes through 5,089 stores, including 179 franchised units, and has operations throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, the U.K., Ireland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany.