5 June 2024
World Environment Day
At alsico, we are wholly committed to protecting the planet and our people. Our teams work closely across the business to identify and assess the impact of our operations on the environment, and how we can make long-sighted, positive, achievable changes.
To ensure that all alsico team members are on the same page and working towards shared goals, we include ecological, social, and economic considerations in our company policies and strategy.
Whilst our commitment to the environment is at the forefront of our ethos and practices every day, on World Environment Day, we’re proud to share a number of the developments we have made in the last few years:
developing more sustainable garments
As a workwear manufacturer, one of the ways that we can generate the greatest impact is by offering companies across industry a sustainable garment that meets their team’s needs.
Garments developed with our ALSIFLEX® technology have been developed with a blend of recycled polyester and renewable fibres. As a result, they emit two-thirds less CO2 during manufacture than comparable conventional workwear garments. The carbon reduction comes from both the change in raw materials used and the amount of energy consumed during the dyeing and finishing processes, as lower temperatures are required.
Many of the garments we now offer customers have these sustainable benefits, and we are always working to expand our range.
ISO 14001 certification
We are certified to ISO 14001, which is an international standard for designing and implementing an environmental management system. This includes processes, policies and practices related to how we interact with the environment. The strict requirements of ISO 14001 provide us with a clear framework which allows us to measure, and therefore continuously improve, our environmental impact.
We have been conscious of our sustainability practices for a long time but having a recognised environmental management system in place allows us to accurately and effectively monitor our efforts.
GRS accreditation
We are really proud to become Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certified. The GRS is a voluntary product standard for tracking and verifying the content of recycled materials in a final product. The certification means that we’re able to advertise our products as containing recycled content.
Many of our customers are also GRS certified, so having achieved certification ourselves gives them confidence that they’re purchasing genuinely recycled products in line with their own sustainability goals and ensure the whole supply chain is sustainable. This is something we are very passionate about because there is currently a lack of standardisation across the industry which can make it more confusing for customers to assess the sustainable claims of garments they are selecting from. However, independent verifications such as the GRS make the industry more transparent and accountable.
Better Cotton
We are members of the Better Cotton Initiative, the world's leading sustainability initiative for cotton. Its mission is to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment. As part of our membership, we have committed to increasing our use of better cotton every year.
We have been speaking with customers to share the benefits of from the initiative, encouraging them to make the switch from virgin cotton in their uniform choice. This is a conversation we are having with stakeholders across our supply chain in addition to customers, which resulted in our main fabric supplier making the switch to BCI cotton.
living wage
Finally, we believe that to be truly sustainable, you must also be paying sustainable, living wages. To ensure that our employees are being paid fairly we have reviewed our wages across the whole group, as well as introducing other incentives to ease financial pressure on employees, such as offering free hot meals in countries where the cost of food is particularly high.
Here we have outlined a small selection of the efforts being undertaken at alsico to reduce not only our own environmental footprint, but also to support our customers with their own goals through the solutions we offer.
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