Corporate Workwear Recycling and Disposal

Corporate workwear is a type of textile waste. As it’s essentially clothing waste but with specific business branding, you can normally dispose of it with any other textile waste if it’s in a clean and dry condition. Items such as hard hats and metal belt buckles may class as another form of waste – such as metal waste.

Many people don’t realise there are options to recycle or donate corporate workwear and other clothing. Wherever possible you should avoid sending old workwear uniforms to landfill – don’t throw them away with your general waste. Instead, there are numerous ways that corporate workwear can be reused and repurposed.

For example, it can be shredded or cut up and used for cleaning rags or insulation. Some companies will upcycle old uniforms to create new, high-quality ones ready to use once more. And if your corporate workwear is in a good condition, it may simply be cleaned and given to a new employee.

Millions of items of corporate workwear are sent to landfill sites or for incineration every year. This means they contribute significantly to the release of harmful gases into the environment – whether they rot in landfill or from the fumes released via burning. It also proves resources are not being used effectively.

Old uniform recycling, reusing, or repurposing offers a simple way to avoid such problems.

Once you’ve disposed of corporate workwear, textile recycling begins. Garments are collected through clothing banks, charity shops, local recycling centres, and door-to-door collections. Many retailers even offer customers the chance to donate their clothes in-store. This will then be repurposed or reused in various methods.

If you put corporate workwear in with general waste it will either go to a landfill site and rot, releasing emissions that pollute the environment, or go to incineration. Seek out disposal methods that recycle old work uniforms instead. Contact Business Waste to get rid of your old workwear in a sustainable way.

Corporate workwear is often made from synthetic fibres like polypropylene, polyester, polyethylene, and polyurethane. This is because they’re cost-effective and highly durable. As corporate workwear covers a wide variety of clothing types, it can be made from cotton, wool, and many other materials – usually depending on the specific item of clothing.

There are a few eco-friendly alternatives to disposing of corporate workwear in landfill or incineration:

• Donate your corporate workwear to textile banks where they’ll decide what can be recycled. Usually, you can’t recycle all the material because it’s made up of a mixed blend, but they’ll recycle as much as possible.
• Return your old uniform to your employer when you leave. This ensures your clothes can be used by the individual who replaces you. If they don’t want it returned, then recycle your workwear at a clothing recycling point. Additionally, employers should make it their responsibility to make uniforms that don’t use blended fibres – which are often hard to impossible to recycle.
• Shred down the workwear into a more fibrous form and sell them on a domestic market. This means the rags can be used again for gardening or cleaning purposes. De-branding and re-selling are a great way to give old clothing away without it feeling like second-hand.

While it’s not entirely certain when workwear uniforms came into practice, the first ever recorded examples are liveries. This was corporate workwear handed to servants from 1500 to 1800 in European courts. The range of form, colours and decorations determined the house where the servant belonged. It also functioned as a way to determine distinction and rank.

A few key facts about corporate workwear recycling and disposal are that:

• 350,000 tonnes of used but wearable clothing is sent to landfill sites each year in the UK. This means around 30% of your unwanted clothes go to landfill sites.
• Around 33 million corporate workwear clothes are provided each year.
• About 90% of used corporate workwear is sent to incineration or to landfill sites.
• Around 700,000 tonnes of clothing are sent to textile banks, recycling centres, and charities each year. This could fill 459 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
• More than 100,000 clothes are sold to be re-used each year.