When an employee starts working at a company, it’s common for them to receive a few uniform pieces. Over time, those items wear out and need to be renewed or replaced. There are also cases where an employee leaves the company and returns the uniform. These are everyday situations you’ve probably experienced in your business. But have you ever stopped to think about how uniforms are disposed of?

According to data published by Sebrae, Brazil generates around 170 thousand tons of textile waste per year, and 80% of it ends up in dumps and landfills. In other words, only 20% of all this material is recycled.

Properly handling items that are no longer used directly impacts the environment and should be a responsibility for companies across the country. That’s why Ideal Work pioneered the creation of the Conscious Uniform Disposal Project. The goal is to serve the textile production chain from start to finish. In addition to producing exclusive uniforms, Ideal Work also supports its customers when it’s time to dispose of used items.

The project is part of our social responsibility and sustainability policy and fulfills two purposes:

• Ensure the proper destination of waste, reducing its environmental impact;
• Avoid exposing our customers’ brands to undesirable situations or environments.

Recycling and reducing environmental impact

Clothes made of 100% cotton take months to fully disappear in nature; items containing synthetic fibers can take up to 200 years. That’s why the ideal is that no uniform piece—or any kind of clothing—be thrown away as regular trash, to avoid the risk of it ending up in nature. Just so you can picture it: dyes and other artificial components can contaminate soil and river water. The risks extend to damage to flora and animals.

In Brazil, more than 400 million kilograms of professional clothing are produced every year. Sooner or later, all of that can return to the environment as waste and pollution.

When done properly, textile recycling allows materials to return to the garment production chain and be used to create many other products. This industrial recycling process is quite complex, as it requires separating textile waste by raw material type and fiber length.

But all that effort is worth it. Instead of old pieces and scraps becoming waste, they can be reused to make other products such as blankets, bedding and bath textiles, wiping cloths, cleaning rags, acoustic lining, among others.

What happens to the company’s image

When disposal is done carelessly and improperly, the company has no control over what can happen to the uniforms. That means your brand may be exposed to undesirable situations or places.

If a uniform is found in an inappropriate location, the company can end up being associated with this poor practice, suffering the repercussions of negative publicity in the media and on social networks—causing immeasurable damage to the business’s image. After all, imagine the terrible optics of finding a shirt with your company’s logo floating in a river or thrown into a pile of trash.

Another possibility is when the uniform is no longer suitable to represent your company, but can still be worn as clothing. In those cases, the item can be reused as long as the identifying embroidery is removed or a patch is sewn over it, decharacterizing the original brand. Another option is to dye the fabric.

However, if reuse is not viable, the company must necessarily be concerned with proper disposal. After all, the uniform represents your brand and it is your responsibility.

It’s important to highlight that decharacterizing waste is a strategic process in company management. Conscious disposal helps provide an appropriate destination for different types of materials and contributes to socio-environmental sustainability, in addition to ensuring brand and institutional image protection.

Discover Ideal Work’s Conscious Uniform Disposal Project

Here at Ideal, we are committed to providing an appropriate destination for old and/or unused uniforms, properly decharacterizing them to avoid exposing any brand and complying with all waste disposal regulations, helping preserve the environment.

For approved partner companies, we use reverse logistics concepts and provide an economical, correct, and efficient solution for the destination of these materials.

The program works as follows

1. Ideal Work creates a project and supplies the uniforms;
2. The customer stores old and unused items and ships them for disposal once they reach at least 100 kg of clothing—equivalent to approximately 200 pieces;
3. Items can be shipped as a “Declaration of Shipment for Disposal” or with an invoice using CFOP code 5949;
4. Once they arrive at our industry, receiving takes place every Tuesday and Thursday, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.;
5. From there, Ideal Work handles the entire disposal process correctly, complying with waste and destination regulations, and ensuring complete decharacterization of logos and visual identity on the items;
6. Finally, Ideal Work issues a technical report for the company, including photos and descriptive details of the disposal procedure.

We believe that actions like these not only contribute to environmental and social well-being, but also encourage other companies to actively participate in awareness and environmental preservation initiatives for our country.

By changing corporate culture, everyone involved in the processes has the opportunity to take part in this cycle and engage as active participants in the environmental cause, creating collection points and raising awareness of the importance of the environment.

To learn more about the Conscious Uniform Disposal Project, contact us and schedule a meeting. Let’s build a more conscious Brazil together.