Sustainable uniforms can help make a company’s model greener, often without increasing costs. Many green uniform options exist, including using Alsco’s rental services. These uniforms are often as durable and high quality, if not more so, than less green alternatives. It is a topic worth investigating, especially if your company needs new uniforms and is considering its options.
What Are Sustainable Uniforms?
Many businesses can help the planet and potentially enhance their bottom line by using sustainable uniforms. A “sustainable uniform” broadly refers to one produced through green processes that make the manufacture, use, laundering and overall maintenance of a uniform friendlier to the environment and, thus, more sustainable.
On one end of the spectrum is clothing produced with materials that result in significant pollution, waste and that last only a short time. Durable clothing produced with green materials through green processes.
Humanity’s Hidden Footprint
Many people are aware of the dramatic impact certain human habits can have on the environment. It is common knowledge that burning fossil fuels and wasting plastic have a significantly negative impact on our planet. However, there are also many smaller harms that we inflict on the environment and some of those relate to uniforms.
Polyester has an environmental impact, but so does cotton. While cotton is naturally renewable, growing cotton isn’t without cost. Cotton cultivation can affect soil quality. Growing cotton also can require significant amounts of pesticides that have the potential to pollute surrounding soil and water.
The environmental costs of bad business practices can demonstrably harm the environment in ways we will need to contend with for decades. Those practices are why Alsco aims for sustainability. Our uniform supplier chooses eco-friendly fabrics when constructing the uniforms Alsco provides and we also try to stay green in other aspects of our business model.
Helping the Planet and Your Company
Going green carries many advantages. Choosing high-quality uniforms that last plays a part in sustainability by reducing waste. This will cost less for your company in the long run because you won’t have to replace uniforms as often.
This means that a company that already has uniforms shouldn’t immediately replace them with greener uniforms. It’s generally greener to allow those uniforms to go through their natural lifespan before replacing them with more sustainable uniforms. Renting uniforms can significantly reduce a company’s environmental impact.
How Alsco Can Help Businesses Go Green
Whether you’re concerned about the planet, your bottom line or—like most companies—both, it makes sense to consider how sustainable practices might improve your model. Going green (or at least greener) is often easier than many imagine. A policy of keeping uniform use more sustainable can be cheaper outright than buying uniforms in a less sustainable way.
One way you can help keep your model sustainable is through Alsco. Our company offers uniform rental services that equip employees with customizable, name-brand work uniforms that are rugged, durable, smart and stylish. Renting uniforms is often cheaper, easier, more consistent and more efficient than buying uniforms because of the economy of scale.
Talk with one of our representatives to find out more about how our environmentally friendly practices can save your business money in the long term.
References
Cotton. WWF.
The Global Environmental Injustice of Fast Fashion. (December 2018). Environmental Health.
Making Fashion Sustainable: Waste and Collective Responsibility. (July 2020). One Earth.
Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry. (September 2007). Environmental Health Perspectives.
Why Fashion Needs to Be More Sustainable. (June 2021). Columbia Climate School.