Analysis: A new project is looking how chats between hair stylists and clients can raise awareness about positive actions to take around climate change
By Catriona Iulia Reid, Aoife Deane and Maria Kirrane, UCC
How much of your day is spent on small talk? It happens by the office coffee maker, waiting at the school gates or queuing for a bus. We also might not appreciate the way that small talk can shape our behaviours. It's where we exchange surface-level information and ideas and can also help us share behavioural norms which influence our actions on a deeper level.
One often overlooked place where small talk is both unavoidable, and often turns into something more meaningful and insightful, is hair salons. Hair appointments can take from 30 minutes to a few hours so, while hair appointments may begin with surface-level chitchat, we often end up talking about anything and everything with our stylist. Their absence was felt strongly during the Covid lockdowns, highlighting the important role that salons play as places where people can build communities and friendships.
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Inspired by an Australian initiative of the same name, A Brush With Climate recognises the community-building role of hair salons. The project is training hairstylists to talk about climate action with their clients by signposting them to everyday actions they can take and local initiatives they can get involved in, helping salons to become sustainability champions in their communities.
Five salons across three rural Cork villages (Bandon, Kinsale, and Clonakilty) and Cork City were approached in March 2025 to participate in this project. Many of them are already implementing pro-environmental practices in their business, such as installing solar panels or cutting down on waste hair products. That makes these salons perfect for this project, as they already have a degree of familiarity with climate action – particularly in Bandon and Cork City, where environmental issues such as flooding are a common topic of conversation.
With an issue as vast as climate change, it’s easy to feel powerless or unsure where to start. Focusing on our own sphere of influence is one solution. It’s helpful to think of how we can change our own behaviours and influence our friends, family, colleagues and the society we live in. It can often feel uncomfortable to talk about climate action, but we need to normalise talking about it so we can normalise acting on it.
From the Guardian, hairdressers trained to talk climate with their clients
Research shows that conversations can encourage more sustainable behaviour, meaning that all of us have the ability to influence the world around us. At a time when we are already highly aware of climate change and its impacts, we may be less aware of what actions we can take or even how to talk about it, but it’s critical that we have more informed public discussion on this.
One of the conversation starter techniques we are testing is to turn casual chat about the climate into a game. A client pulls a card from a deck of cards which might ask "What if I repaired an item at home instead of buying new?" and the game is to then imagine how they might do this in real life. This card could lead to a conversation about sustainable consumption, fast fashion or even repair cafés. The goal is to get people thinking about how their individual actions impact the broader world, as well as counteracting voices which seek to delay action, also known as "delay discourses".
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In each of the participating salons, clients are also invited to take a climate action pledge by scanning a QR code sticker attached to the mirror in front of them. The pledges range from simple, everyday actions within our individual sphere of influence (such as cutting down on food waste or saving energy at home) to actions which can influence our communities (such as pledging to talk to family or friends about climate change, or to write to a TD or local councillor).
To date, 118 pledges have been made by 23 individuals and the QR code stickers will be in place until next April. Eight weeks after making a pledge, clients who opt-in also receive a personalised email checking in on their progress.
Our project is stylist-led, meaning that we adapt our approach and resources to meet the needs of the salons. For the stylists who have expressed hesitation about discussing climate action with clients, or even concerns about unintentionally spreading misinformation, we have workshopped ways we can support them. This includes signposting resources of evidence-based information and curating flashcards with key points they can refer to on-the-go.
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There are loud voices, powerful actors and well-funded bodies within the climate space working to delay climate action so an informed, action-focused society can better hold government and corporations to account. At COP30 in Brazil, we saw calls for increased cooperation between countries to meet climate goals. This is particularly important now amid criticisms of the government for an apparent lack of ambition for climate action in Budget 2026, with climate adaptation measures missing from the Budget, despite the Climate Change Advisory Council’s warnings about Ireland being poorly prepared to face increasingly powerful storms.
Our work aims to translate these national and global challenges into the ordinary by prompting individuals to imagine and discuss how they might embed climate actions into everyday life. By the end of our project, we hope to produce a suite of resources for salons to use and for our method to be replicated elsewhere.
‘A Brush With Climate’ is led by University College Cork in partnership with The Environmental Forum and is funded under the 2025 Research Ireland Discover Programme
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Catriona Iulia Reid is a Research Assistant at MaREI, the Research Ireland Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine at UCC. Aoife Deane is Communications and Public Engagement Manager at at MaREI at UCC. Dr Maria Kirrane is Head of Sustainability and Climate Action at UCC.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
