Repair and reuse of workwear to protect the environment

Climate change is forcing us to find innovate solutions for more sustainability. This also affects the PPE and workwear industry, as the production of clothing in particular often requires a very high use of resources.

Fristads is a manufacturer of workwear and has had sustainability and environmental protection on its agenda for many years. The company is constantly working to reduce its emissions and find new ways to protect the environment. The triad of repair, reuse and recycling should help to give products that have already been manufactured as long a life as possible. In this interview, Lena Bay Højland explains why the company relies on these solutions and what is in it for the company.

What's your drive behind repair as a service. Why do you offer this?

Lena Bay Højland: We want to be the leader of sustainability and keep our current leading position. But we can't keep our current position without bringing some new ideas and innovations. This is where the new Service offering idea comes from. We want to offer more sustainable long lasting products, and also services that can prolong the life time of our products even more (Fristads Re-pair and Re-use Services) as well services connected to products end of life (Fristads Re-cycle). We are constantly looking on how to make our business better without producing more, keeping the environment in mind all the time, because it's the DNA of Fristads.

Repairing of workwear was a part of our business for a long time. This is done in the frame of reclamations handling. Fristads manufactures workwear that handles great wear and tear and therefore we have been associated with high quality since we started nearly 100 years ago. Yet even high-quality workwear can lose a button or have a seam come undone over long product lifetime. We offer to repair the damage, because usually the rest of the piece is still fully functional even after long time of usage.

We are also focusing very much on recyclability in an open and closed loop. We offer it under our Re-cycle Service. But for me, the most interesting part of our business approach mentioned above is the Re-Use. At first, I was a bit skeptical about the reuse, because we didn't know how ready the end users were to use something that was pre-owned, even if it was refurbished (taking it back, washing it, fixing it). Today, we're still at a very early stage, so we are not yet able to provide any figures to confirm this. But in our opinion, there is great potential here. The reason is obvious: In all companies, there is a certain flow of workers coming in and leaving again. Those workers often come for only a short amount of time, which means they barely use their workwear. They hardly use the expensive workwear, and yet it is often thrown away in the end – workwear that is extremely resilient and durable. You can refurbish it, make it look nice and new, and then still wear it. There must be great potential for savings here. It's a great strategy for saving money and protecting the environment.

What's in it for you as company? You could probably make more money from selling new clothes than repairing old ones?

Bay Højland: At first glance, that would indeed be the logical approach: produce and sell more. It's just that we know that this is not sustainable in long term. We have to think about the future. All the new models we are testing today is something to look on from a quite long perspective, because they may not yet be worthwhile from today's perspective. But if we did not look from this perspective, none of these innovations would ever take place. And we believe that you need other business models in order to be able to grow in a sustainable way.

Scope 3 obliges us to find solutions for savings. It's there and real and requires an input. Today, we know that we can do a lot of things by using more sustainable material, techniques and initiatives, to make the scope 3 figures go down. But of course, we also want to grow our business, so either we make it grow by producing more (which counteracts environmental protection) or by finding other ways. 

What do you think, how will the industry in general develop in terms of sustainability?

Bay Højland: That's the million dollar question. I think all the workwear producers will be moving towards having more sustainable ways of production and building up new business models. Because there will be new regulations which we will have to meet. If you look at the industry today, all manufacturers are taking different steps in terms of sustainability. But you won’t find one who doesn’t do anything. That's why I think the industry is turning more and more towards sustainability.