Cleaning as a superpower in the drive for circularity

ORGANISATIONS ARE making great strides in sustainable cleaning. A canter through any recent edition of Cleaning Matters tells us so. 

This is increasingly important in terms of climate emergency and business sense – we all understand that carelessly carbon-hungry operations will find it much harder to survive and attract custom and investment, as all industries ramp up their circularity agendas. Gone are the days of cutting corners and sacrificing good practice for greater profits, and thankfully so.

The UK Government wants to decarbonise all areas of the UK economy by its 2050 net zero target, and many forward-thinking companies have strategies in place to achieve this in their own spheres of influence much sooner. Those who don’t scrutinise every area of what they do, including cleaning, will certainly be left behind in this competitive landscape.

Of course, sustainable cleaning means different things to individual businesses. Regenex is concerned with the rescue of hospitality and healthcare linen that would otherwise be condemned due to marks and discoloration. For us, it is all about cleaning without harsh chemicals, using as little water as possible, recycling water between processes on site, and formulating treatments that demand only low temperatures.

We opt for methods that are as sustainable as possible – but the key point that I want to talk about in this feature, is that responsible choices in products and processes are only part of how cleaning supports our environmental strategy and could benefit yours. 

Shifting focus away from recycling

For Regenex, cleaning directly supports re-use – a crucial consideration for any company or organisation that is seriously committed to low carbon or carbon neutral operations.Rethinking re-use is the key takeaway of this feature and we will discuss it in detail.

When I travel around the UK and beyond, meeting laundry sector customers, I sometimes find that the sector is still very focused on recycling, to minimise textile waste. While this is commendable, it can distract from more effective ways to make a difference.

Quite rightly, textile waste looms large in owners’ and managers’ minds, due in part to the continuing outrage around fast fashion and the world’s dumping grounds for unwanted garments. We feel good about making sure linen is recycled.

But we can no longer simply assign waste textiles to the bin marked ‘recycling’ and feel like we have done our bit for the planet.

This is because recycling is simply a delay in waste reaching the inevitable destination of landfill – a step along the way that requires another carbon-generating manufacturing process to turn unwanted textiles from one thing to another.

Put simply, it’s time to relegate recycling! This could sound depressing and defeatist if we did not have other avenues of good practice to focus on.

But we really do! Let’s talk more about re-use. It is better to use less in the first place, and keep it for longer, than put our energies into recycling it. 

The rise of the concept of re-use

I argue that businesses could and should give more emphasis to re-use. This is something I’ve talked passionately about at conferences, in the media, and on the Regenex blog, for several years now. 

It’s a concept that has certainly risen in businesses’ collective consciousness, during Regenex’s first seven years of trading – and it is still on the ascendant.

Are you familiar with the EU waste hierarchy? I hope so! This long established and widely-accepted framework for waste management practices is pleasingly simple and straightforward. It consists of five steps, ranked from most to least preferred. Here is this the summary of this slim but rather genius theory.

1. Prevention: Reducing waste generation
2. Reuse: Using items again for the same or different purpose
3. Recycling: Processing materials to make new products
4. Recovery: Converting waste into energy or other usable forms
5. Disposal: Landfilling or incineration as a last resort.

The hierarchy aims to minimise environmental impact and promote sustainable waste management practices, providing a way of working that any organisation, no matter what it does, can get on board with. The UK Government publishes a very helpful guide on how to apply it on a practical level.

We can see from the waste hierarchy that it is much smarter not to use resources at all, whatever they are. 

That means, do not buy anything that is not essential. Do not support any unnecessary manufacture. I do not say this lightly. It’s an edict that requires consistency, determination and ingenious solutions to problems. However, it can be applied incrementally. Any improvement is worthwhile.

After this principle, the most important consideration is re-use. 

Re-use in textiles

Because Regenex works with textiles and laundries, the examples in this feature are from that world, but the ideas contained therein can be universally applicable.

Using textile waste as a case study, the need for re-use is illustrated by alarming statistics. According to Impact+, 92million tonnes of textile waste are generated annually worldwide – the equivalent of a refuse truck of clothing being incinerated or dumped in landfill every second.

The fashion and textile sector’s linear business model continues to fuel overproduction and overconsumption, contributing to the global waste pollution crisis.

Despite initiatives to counter this, the industry’s aspirational narrative of newness, immediacy and disposability means we are only just beginning to address the problem that everyone has heard about, and been painfully aware of, for years. And it is not just clothing. 11% of plastic waste comes from this sector, third in line after packaging and consumer goods.

To try to change global mindsets, forward-thinking campaigners are leading movements aimed at encouraging consumers to embrace mindful practices like repairing items, creating a core basic or ‘capsule’ wardrobe, redesigning old pieces, buying vintage or swapping clothing, to drive the shift towards a circular fashion and textile sector.

And frankly, business leaders in all sectors, can take some influence from these principles and apply it to industrial practices.

Thrift, care, making do and mending

Re-use is about making the most of what you have. Using it for as long as possible. Then employing it again, for some other purpose, or maybe moving it on to someone and somewhere else, without reprocessing it. 

For the contract laundry groups that Regenex works with, some important commodities to use for as long as possible are bedlinen, tableware, towels and staff uniforms. For other businesses – your business – this will be other items… perhaps a myriad of items in circulation. 

It sounds simplistic and old-fashioned but thrift, care over small carbon savings that really add up, and – to borrow that old WW2 Board of Trade advice to resourceful housewives – making do and mending are important edicts in 2025 and beyond.

So, what does this have to do with cleaning? Well, clever cleaning can play an important part in supporting re-use. For Regenex, this is our reason for existing, to apply specialist cleaning processes to good linen that would otherwise be subject to an early exit, due to marks and stains. 

Success from the laundry sector

One great example of eco-consciousness from the laundry sector is Thomsons Laundry in Haverford West – certainly one of the most positive thinkers we have collaborated with, for seven years and counting. 

Owner Andrew Hanson and his team have sent several tonnes of linen to Regenex for successful treatment so far, saving a significant amount of carbon on the manufacture of new stock as well as many thousands of points in unnecessary top-ups.

Holiday lettings brand uSnooz is a small but exemplary operator which has methodically saved non-conformance linen for specialist processing, to make sure it gets maximum usage from stock. Saif Linen, another customer of Regenex, was the first laundry in Yorkshire to install an Ozone system for its environmental benefits.

When luxury accommodation brand Pink Moon struggled with grubby marks on its pristine white festival glamping linen stock – as seen at festivals including Latitude, Isle of Wight and Reading and Leeds – the company sent seven tonnes for processing, and we were able to return 6.4 tonnes as serviceable linen.

This amounted to an 89% success rate with only 742 kilograms sold on as premium rag. The exercise saved Pink Moon thousands of pounds in replacement stock and over 22 tonnes of carbon associated with the manufacture of new items.

Another case study can be provided by an 11.5 tonne consignment of hospitality linen from Downtons Dry Cleaning, Laundry and Linen Hire, which would otherwise have been condemned and sent to rag. A total of 83% was revived to its original condition.

The eco-friendly company based in Launceston, south-west Devon, which services premium hotels, holiday cottages, wedding venues and B&Bs, saved £33,250 on the cost of buying replacement linen and 285 tonnes of carbon compared with the environmental toll of newly manufactured items.

These are great examples that many other businesses could learn from. Other suppliers and partners in the Regenex network have different tricks and systems to help laundries prioritise sustainability – setting them on the right course for circularity that will make great business sense for decades to come. 

Cleaning is a fast-evolving superpower in sustainability

In our case, cleaning definitely does support re-use, and therefore sustainability. Not just the linen we process for our customers but the way we maintain our machinery, appliances and workspaces for maximum lifespans.

As well as thinking about cleaning in its own, routine, everyday right, we can harness it as a stepping stone to achieving wider, higher, net zero ambitions.

Any company or organisation can think about how cleaning supports re-use, how looking after stock and equipment can make it last longer, or go further. Moreover, how processes can be modified and optimised to make this happen.

The seemingly humble act of cleaning – undertaken inhouse or outsourced to specialists – can be a real superpower in the drive for circularity. What is more, technologies are advancing fast to optimise the effectiveness of products and processes.

Managers and owners have a duty to keep abreast of developments – reported in media like Cleaning Matters – and investigate their possible applications, to support the survival and success of their businesses.

The team at Regenex is grounded in textile chemistry knowhow and as such we are involved with various research projects alongside leading academics, for example a project afoot to wash tensile strength in to used linen, to prolong its life.

Yes, we are at a point of climate emergency, and the collective task to pull us back from the brink, and on course for a greener future, can seem insurmountable – but it’s also true to say we are in exciting times of innovation and new possibilities.

The wider picture

While governments can incentivise industry and citizens to shift towards circular business models, prioritising re-use and reducing the volume of manufacture, statute moves slowly,and initiatives have mixed results in terms of effectiveness and enforcement.

Again, taking one example from the laundry sector, bosses are turning their attention to EPR, or extended producer responsibility – the EU legislation that’s progressing fast and certain to prompt huge change for any business that deals in textiles.

Yes it’s EU. And no, Great Britain is not in the EU. But where the EU overhauls its rules and standards, others will follow – particularly next-door neighbours like the UK, where EPR is on our own Government’s radar for action.

You have probably heard of EPR and are perhaps aware that this is an amendment to the EU Waste Framework Directive (WFD) – which devised the EU waste hierarchy – currently moving through the legislative process.

When it is implemented, companies will be charged for the costs associated with the end-of-life management of their products. We do not know yet what those fees might be. But their aim is to support circularity by cutting textile waste.

It is certain that the threat of big bills for sending waste to landfill will be yet another reason to incentivise laundries, hospitality providers, healthcare organisations and others to really focus on binning far less – and put good intentions into everyday practice.

Progressive players in the industry see EPR as an opportunity – simply another driver, among many, to conserve resources and operate as ethically as possible. Saving money of course is a welcome knock-on effect of buying less linen stock and extending its lifespan.

Saving money as well as carbon

Not all initiatives aimed at driving circularity have the added benefit of reducing overheads. In some cases, it can be more expensive to choose the more sustainable option – at least from the point of view of initial outlay, when long-term benefits are not taken into consideration.

However, re-use, achieved through clever cleaning, does generally achieve cost savings. Less stock and equipment is bought. The essentials in circulation are made to last longer, therefore outgoings come down.

Continuing to use laundries as the example, more than 20 CLGs now turn regularly to Regenex to support them in getting the most out of stock, as the practice of re-use before recycling becomes more commonplace and normalised in the UK sector.

This is a no brainer financially as well as in terms of circularity, when it is considered that linen stock accounts for 15% of a laundry’s turnover, the second largest single outgoing after staffing. 

Like almost all costs, it is also rising – almost 5% up on last year and 18% in the past three years according to the Textile Services Association’s latest Cost Index, the barometer for the UK industry.

While money saving initiatives can harm sustainability, getting the most out of linen has a very positive effect on a laundry’s carbon footprint. Re-using stock delays and minimises future recycling processes – which, as we have discussed, require another round of energy and water – and the inevitable disposal to landfill, as a part of our collective textile waste problem. 

Re-use and cleaning in summary

So, in all, there is some very positive, achievable practice out there, whatever the sector and the circumstances. Environmental gains are there for the taking and I fully expect re-use and frugality to become normalised in the years to come. 

I recommend that any business ask itself, how do we harness our cleaning schedules to support our re-use agenda? In some cases, this might involve prioritising practices that can prolong the life of infrastructure, equipment or consumables. 

It could involve stepping up – or stepping down. Is this regularity of maintenance required? In the same way that the fashion sector has implored us not to wash our jeans, do some-long held practices and perceived wisdom require a rethink?

The potential for change and improvement can be wide ranging. In summary, taking care to save carbon, gramme by gramme – through savvy cleaning habits, wherever possible – can add up to meaningful results.

Paul Hamilton is technical director at Regenex

For more information, visit www.regenex.co.uk