Did you know, 350,000 tonnes worth of textiles are sent to landfill each year?
Our Buy Back scheme has been active since 2019 where our initial aim was to recycle clothing and signage found to be surplus after charity and sporting events. Since the launch of Workwear Pro Direct we have refocused our goals to develop our ‘Buy Back’ scheme by partnering with a leading textile destruction and recycling firm, Avena who specialise in secure clothing & uniform disposal.
Our customers all have the option to return old and damaged workwear or uniforms to us which we then send to Avena for disposal. As an incentive for customers to dispose of old clothing in an environmentally conscious way, we credit our customers £30 for every 100kg of workwear returned!
The WWPD team sort through all Buy Back returns into 2 containers for collection:
- Textiles with 50% + cotton content which can then be broken down and recycled into to new materials.
- Less than 50% cotton and all other materials currently cannot be recycled with Avena but are sent to be incinerated and turned into energy.
Both options reduce landfill waste.
Our first phase of our Buy Back collection with Avena has resulted in the following:
RETURN
616 kg of clothing was returned to us to be recycled or re-used. That's an equivalent weight to 1,500 iPads!
RESCUE
616 kg clothing = 1048 kg of Co2 saved from our atmosphere compared to disposal by landfill.
An estimated 628,406 litres of water has been saved by aiding the manufacturing process of future textiles.
RECYCLE or REPURPOSE
100% of our Buy Back collection that was recycled or re-used.
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The Buy Back Challenge
Within our industry a huge challenge that we face is how to make sustainably made products more available and affordable to our customers.
We are proud to partner with top brands such as Regatta (Honestly Made collection), Result (Genuine Recycled range), Brook Taverner (Performance/Eclipse & Today collections) and Leo Workwear (Eco Viz range) who are all proactively innovating and working hard to overcome this challenge by making fantastic eco conscious products available for consumers to make smarter, sustainable choices.
With more sustainable products on the market we can further reduce amount of clothing sent for incineration and increase our Buy Back collections that can be recycled.
We are proud of what we have done so far but remain focused on further reducing textile landfill.
Do you want to purchase sustainably made uniform but feel the costs are too high? Challenge us to find you the best lines of eco friendly products at the best price!
Together, we can make a difference!
Keep an eye out with our progress on the Buy Back challenge in future news stories….
