The project “Future skills for a better life in Sustainable Salons”, working title ‘Green Salon 2.0’, tries to transfer the ideas and knowledge on sustainability and environment through information, a simplified standard, education and training to students, schools, salons, employees and other stakeholders in the hair & beauty sector. Besides providing insight into sustainability the project also aims to give an image on the profile of a hairdresser in 2030 from the viewpoint of sustainability, technology and entrepreneurial skills. Context: The hairdressing sector in Europe employs more than one million people across 400.000 hairdressing salons, receiving 350 million potential customers. Hairdressing (and barbering) services, together with beauty treatment - the hair & beauty sector as it is called, form the personal services sector. Over the last years the sector has gone through a great deal of changes. The sector often has more affinity with knowledge about their profession than with other aspects of business. Attention to labour, sustainability, environment, health & safety, marketing and services are success factors for the future. A lot of these aspects you could share under the label: sustainability & future oriented skills. Objectives: In this project we will combine the sustainable ideas through education and training with innovative ideas within the sector. The educational products we want to generate during the process will include workshops on sustainability and trends, teaching materials for schools and extracurricular education about sustainability in the 'sustainable' hair salon. We start with the development of a profile of a hairdresser and its competences (sustainability, technology, entrepreneurship) in 2030; Parallel we will develop a simplified low threshold system on sustainability/environment (label) for schools (salon). Simultaneously we will work on a self-assessment internet tools on competence level and measuring the gap on profile and future competences and the gap of the level towards the sustainability system; specific learning material on sustainability/environment focussed on the sector and awareness tools to use in VET and salons to use in communication with employees and clients on the subjects. Against this background, co-financing of this proposed project by the EU would enable the participating partners to develop knowledge and tools that can easily be implemented by schools and used in salons throughout Europe on an easy accessible level. What and how: In the project we gather facts through an inventory of the hairdresser's competencies in 2030, the desired situation in a sustainable salon focused on environmental aspects (core of a simple standard), competences needed and research on 2 self-assessment tools to map the current situation on: 1. competence level and measuring the gap on profile and future competences and 2. the gap of the level towards the sustainability system on environment and sustainability in schools (salon). The outcomes will be discussed with experts and will be input for the self-assessment tools, the learning material on environment in a sustainable salon and awareness material on sustainability. The 2 multiplier events are planned to share results and to generate commitment and remarks from stakeholders. The project works with a final sector conference with student participation along the project. Results and impact: We will communicate through a brochure, articles, press releases, a project website and the final conference in Italy, on the results of the entire project. By informing and searching for interaction with students, teachers and policy makers, we want to take steps towards more sustainability. Vocational education is in close contact with the companies in the local community and can open doors to changes in the industry. Therefore, activities will be organized with students, employees and employers in the partner countries. Students and teachers are actively involved in the activities in each country. To demonstrate through this project, we in Europe need to act sustainably in the sector in a striking way. Long term: The effect of working sustainable in a ‘Sustainable or green salon’ bottom line is reducing risks and have more pleasure and satisfaction on the work spot. Sustainability creates less environmental damage, less waste and a better, healthier use of materials and resources, a more controlled use of energy and water, more sustainable choices in investing in equipment, less problems with health & safety and a higher level of customer experience and employee satisfaction. This all has to be managed by a salon owner or self-employed hair & beauty specialist with the right future oriented skills. In this way the salon can, in the long run, be more profitable and competitive. This requires good education and training in regular VET and non-formal education, accessible to people who are already working in the sector.
By developing the outputs, we aim to enable schools and SMEs to implement environmental care in a structured way in schools and salons, to raise awareness and to provide schools with environmental teaching tools. The outputs we developed had to be practical, in line with industry practice and easy to implement. The aim: to improve education and the environmental performance of the salon in schools and hairdressing salons. To produce better educated students and to improve the environment with better educational material. We did this through research, awareness raising (through dissemination, offering the digital and physical tools) among the target groups and the development of a simple environmental system, self-assessment tools and teaching materials at 3 levels. Involving students, teachers, experts in development and testing was important for understanding the level and creating support. Transnationally, we were able to share knowledge between partners at different levels. There were partners with more advanced knowledge from which others could benefit. We were able to use the different qualities to find solutions and implement them in order to achieve the set project goals, both at the content level and in the field of communication and dissemination.
We applied for the project to continue to work on sustainability in the hair and beauty sector, partly as a follow-up to the Green Salon project (Future Skills & Sustainable Development), which focused mainly on health and safety issues in the sector. On the other hand, to focus more on the environmental aspect within the sustainability of the sector. The EU's Green Deal programme, the road to climate neutrality, focuses on renewable energy, moving towards a circular economy and biodiversity. These are issues where H&B education and sector organisations can take the lead. In the sector, innovators (green/sustainable salons) are aware of the importance of sustainability. In education, attention is mostly focused on technical aspects. Hairdressing colleges could do much more to embed sustainability in their training programmes and thus produce professionals who can make a difference. Sustainability is not yet a top priority, but it will be in the near future. Thanks to Erasmus+, a start has been made to improve the health and safety awareness of hairdressers in Europe. During the Green salon project, many schools, salons, suppliers and even the media contacted us for more information about the project, the knowledge and the materials developed. In the Netherlands, our teaching materials and scans are used in the teaching materials of the Sustainable MBO steering group. During the previous Green Salon project, salon owners and teachers asked for guidelines on how to introduce sustainability/environment in their schools & salons. A simplified low-threshold system would make it easier to start with sustainability and the environment in the school (salon) and the hair dress salon. This made us decide to do our own research on the needs for environmental information and systems. These insights could be used in the development of educational resources on environmental management specific to the sector. Both schools and employer organizations, the interviews revealed, were interested in this. Contacts with the international employers' organization showed that in addition to educational materials about environmental care, there was also a need for more information about developments surrounding the profession of hairdresser and salon owner in the future. That is why a study was started into developments in the field of technology, entrepreneurship and the environment. This need has led to the development and implementation of the Sustainable salon project (Future skills for a better life in Sustainable Salons) in which we focus on the development of an environmental care system for the sector and environmental teaching aids targeted at the sector, among other things. The project acronym is Green Salon 2.0. In the project we used the acronym 'Sustainable Salon'.