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Hairdressers across Sydney are upskilling to talk about climate change action with clients who are spending hours in the salon chair.
Paddington hairdresser Paloma Rose Garcia said hairdressers were great at having conversations and this was an opportunity to discuss how to foil climate change.
Penny Jennifer Garry (standing) with Barney Martin manager Wednesday Hulme. Both women participated in training for hairdressers in how to talk about climate action with their clients.Credit:Louise Kennerley
“It’s not about having a scary, sad, intense conversation,” Garcia said. “It can be as simple as just acknowledging it, and bringing it to the forefront of people’s minds.”
The owner of PALOMA salon recently organised seminars for dozens of hairdressers across Sydney to instruct them on the curly topic of how to talk to their clients about climate action.
The training was led by Climate Council scientist Lesley Hughes and social scientist Rebecca Huntley, author of How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way that Makes a Difference.
Participating salons also have glossy flyers for customers with facts and figures about climate change, a call-to-action to vote and lobby their MP, and QR codes leading to ABC Vote Compass and the AEC to check their electorate. One side says “this salon chats about love, life & climate action”; the other says “we want our hair hot, not our planet”.
Climate change is no longer a fringe topic, with surveys consistently showing most Australians rate the crisis among their top concerns after the devastating bushfires and floods over the past three years.
Garcia, 37, believes hairdressers are ideal climate leaders because they have a relationship of trust with clients who spend about an hour at a time in the salon, and return every eight weeks.
She has been deliberately raising the topic while cutting hair ever since she went on a Climate Council trip to Heron Island three years ago, and she finds the conversations often come up naturally.