Inside this chic Sydney hair salon... A poster reads: “This salon chats about love, life & climate action.”
“The weather is the hook. You can take a cue from that,” says Prof Lesley Hughes, one of two climate scientists who have helped run workshops to give hairdressers the tools for times when the conversation turns to the existential.
“You can show the science until you’re blue in the face but what can be more effective are people who you trust talking about it. It’s important to show it’s not a subject to be afraid of.”
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More than 400 hairdressers have attended workshops as part of a project called A Brush With Climate |
During the sessions, hairdressers hear the basics of climate science and get to role play how conversations might go. They also take one of the posters back to their own salons.
“We’re relationship builders,” says Garcia. Some guests, she says “feel helpless and they’re a bit embarrassed that they don’t understand the science”, but want to know more. Mostly, clients accept the basis for climate action but don’t know what to do next.
“Some women keep their hairdressers for a long time and they’ll tell them their secrets – they’re the unpaid therapist,” says Smith."
REDFEARN FAILED TO INQUIRE
Into how many tens of kilowatts the salon's sixteen blow dryers consume, or the amperage of the air conditioners struggling to keep up with them.
Both run off Sydney's largely coal fired power grid.
A MacQuairie University press release explains that Project founder and noted ant ecology authority Lesley Hughes is:
"Now entering a new phase in her life, focusing on more climate advocacy work and travelling which includes cruising to Antarctica and ziplining to tree houses in the Laotian jungle to look for gibbons."
