WASTE, POLLUTION & SUSTAINABILITY Waste Not, Want Not


Why are laundry providers for care settings needlessly throwing out good linens? David Midgley, Managing Director of Regenex, explains.


Imagine a thick, fluffy white towel. It’s a good quality one, naturally, as your care home has exemplary standards. It has been washed only a handful of times but, despite the vigilance of laundry staff, it must have gone into the industrial drum with something dark blue or black, because it has an unmistakable grey tinge.


Unlike in a four-star hotel, a slight off-colour in a residential setting may not be a huge problem – but there’s certainly a tipping point. If it’s too tinged, or resplendent with a large tomatoey food stain, it does not present a good image for the establishment, and it has to go.


That’s understandable but, when this decision is made, where does that towel go to? Traditionally, the answer would be to landfill or rag, even though there is nothing wrong with the towel; it’s hardly worn at all and it’s completely serviceable.


Many laundries still take this approach, oſten aſter attempting to ‘kill or cure’ the towel with extra detergent and a higher temperature. However, thanks to advances in technology, there are now other options available – with significant benefits to costs and environmental impact.


SAVING MONEY AND THE ENVIRONMENT


It’s much more expensive to replace textiles than to engage a specialist cleaner or dyer to revive them. Laundry houses typically spend 10% of their turnover on topping up stock levels, and much of that outlay is needless.


Day by day, items thrown away might not seem like much, and the cost gain of saving them may not be evident. But every bedsheet, pillowcase or staff uniform adds up.


While very dirty linens are generally a small minority of the commercial washing pile, the sheer scale of the industry means that volumes of textiles being discarded way too early in their life cycle, just because of discoloration or staining, are significant. There is a lot of money to be saved.


Coupled with the benefit to the environment, the prospect of keeping linens in circulation for longer becomes even more of a worthwhile option.


All businesses and organisations are under pressure to increase their green credentials, and the care sector is no exception.


Demonstrating an excellent attitude to textile waste is comparatively easy to achieve when set against striving for improvements for other forms of waste – such as endless medical and personal care items that cannot be recycled due to their contamination risk, or single-use plastics in food packaging that will take major change in existing ways of working to combat.


It’s crucial to hang onto textiles because the environmental impact of manufacturing new items is so huge. A total of 70% of the carbon footprint of a poly/cotton bedsheet is accounted for in its manufacture. Just 30% relates to the subsequent washings, ironing and transportation during its life.


The devastation of needless textile production for ‘fast fashion’ has been all over the media in the last 12 months, so it’s likely that this will lead to increased public and professional pressure for commercial laundries to demonstrate a more thoughtful, sustainable way of working.


Forward-thinkers in the sector believe this will be simply a matter of time and see it as an additional reason to get ahead of the curve.


There is no question that looking aſter linens better, and ordering fewer replacement items, can make a significant difference to a company’s environmental credentials as well as its bottom line.


MAKE GREY GO AWAY


So, you have linens that don’t look the way they should – though they are free of rips or tears, and they have plenty of wear leſt in them. What can be done?


Setting them aside and trying a ‘kill or cure’ treatment can be a waste of time, detergent and hot water, when desired results are achievable only 30% of the time.


Smart laundry managers are enlisting specialist cleaners who have a 75% to 80% chance of restoring whiteness or original colour – and delivering items back to stock for many more washes to come.


Put simply, every piece of laundry – including pricier items such as chefs’ whites and other staff uniforms – successfully cleaned represents an item that does not have to be re- ordered, and an item that does not have to go to landfill. That makes sense all round.


THE SCIENCE BIT


How do they make those stains and that discoloration simply disappear? Regenex has developed a gentle, multi-bath approach based on opening up fibres in a fabric to liſt stains.


The company’s methods, calling on over 100 years of textile dyeing expertise from elsewhere in the business, were carefully developed and trialled over two years.


Test fabrics were scrutinised by university and independent laboratories, to make sure the process caused no detriment to wear or strength.


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www.tomorrowscare.co.uk


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