The Sydney International Spa & Beauty Expo launched a Low Carbon Initiative for the spa and beauty industry, with a goal to reduce the operational climate change impact from the industry by 20 per cent by 2015.
“We have been working with the Australasian Spa Association, Spa Australasia magazine and the Carbon Reduction Institute to develop the initiative,” said Lauren Ebbeck. “The aim is to evaluate and reduce the environmental impact of our industry, making us one of the first in the world to take joint voluntary action against climate change.”
Participating in the initiative allows spa and salon owners to investigate practical ways to reduce power, water and waste in their business, They can also offset some emissions with carbon credits and earn the well-established LowCO2 or NoCO2 business certification logo to promote their environmental actions.
Rob Cawthorne, Managing Director of carbon management consultancy, Carbon Reduction Institute (CRI), launched the initiative to industry leaders and invited guests at the Platinum Spa Networking Event. Cawthorne noted some of the benefits of participating in the Initiative as increased sustainability of business operations; saving water, power and money; and providing a competitive advantage over non-certified businesses.
“I think, for the spa and beauty industry, being a luxury industry, it’s going to be in harder economic climates [as a result of climate change]… it is going to be one of the first industries people are going to turn away from,” Cawthorne told Professional Beauty. “So the spa and beauty industry have a lot to gain from reducing their impacts. Reducing their impact will result in lower costs and place the industry in a better position as far as how it’s perceived by, in particular, climate-conscious consumers. The initiative’s aiming to capture climate-conscious consumers, give them options of spas and allow people to not feel guilty about luxuries because why are we trying to stop climate change? To keep the standard of living we have now.”
The CRI had a stand at the expo, which Cawthorne said was popular. “We’ve had a great response. It’s always interesting to see how the uptake is once people get into the costs. We’ve discounted the yearly fees for this [spa and beauty] initiative. That’s aiming to encourage people. The business assessments we do are run at a low profit margin anyway. The aim here is not to derive profits through the voluntary mechanism (the initiative), we actually hope that some of the Carbon Pollution Reduction scheme, where you’ve got the bigger polluting businesses that are really using us to save money, we hope that the money we get from them will effectively fund the voluntary scheme.”
To register for the initiative or for more information visit www.NoCO2.com.au/spaandbeauty