How to Embrace Circularity in Your Corporate Uniform Strategy

Uniforms are, for many brands, a critical part of branding itself. Whether it's a retail worker's embroidered shirt, a whole outfit for hospitality staff, or more work-oriented uniforms that have a job to do beyond their appearance, the choices you make in uniforms will reflect on your brand and business as a whole.

This goes beyond just your choice of design and requirements: you also have to consider the sustainability of the uniforms you procure for your employees.

One of the most important concepts for corporate uniforms is circularity. What is circularity, why is it important, and how can you embrace it as part of your uniform strategy?

What is Circularity?

Circularity is a kind of response to previous forms of commerce. It's not solely limited to uniforms, but can apply to the whole of the commercial ecosystem, both within B2B systems like uniforms and with B2C retail sales and more.

The previous paradigm is broadly known as the take-make-dispose system. This is a linear process:

• Take: resources are taken from the environment.
• Make: those resources are used to produce products for sale and use.
• Dispose: the products are consumed or used and then disposed of.

For something like uniforms, you might purchase a bulk batch of uniforms for your employees. You hand them out, and that's the end of your involvement. Your employees wear them. If they wear out, they dispose of them and get new ones. If the employee retires, is fired, or otherwise leaves, they do whatever they feel like with the uniforms.

This is broadly considered a wasteful process. Circularity is a modern way of rethinking the product ecosystem and involving suppliers in efforts to make the overall system more sustainable.

Depending on the framework you find for circularity, it might be the Four Rs, the Five Rs, the Seven Rs, or some other number of Rs. Different people doing theory work on circularity add or combine R-words. It generally looks something like this:

• Rethink. Anyone in a position within the ecosystem should spend some time rethinking their position and their role, and what actions they can take to improve circularity. A consumer might be more mindful in the products they buy; a business might adjust their suppliers, their processing, or their ability to return and recover products.
• Revamp. Businesses, wherever possible, should take steps to revamp their business processes to be more circular. Identifying practices and finding their weaknesses, seeking out ways to increase efficiency, and fostering innovation in environmentally friendly systems are all part of this R.
• Reduce. The nature of the universe means that entropy is an inevitable part of it, and there is no perfect recycling, no perfect emissionless production, and no perfect logistics system. But, through collective action and rethinking processes, we can collectively reduce waste throughout the ecosystem.
• Repurpose or Resale. A significant goal of the circular economy is the goal of repurposing and reusing products as much as possible. Using uniforms as the discussion topic, instead of employees discarding them when they're no longer useful, they can be recovered and returned to the uniform supplier, who can take actions such as repairing, recycling, or otherwise recovering them for reuse, either with your company or with another that can use them.
• Recycle. Anything that can't be recovered and repurposed should be recycled whenever possible. With something like uniforms, that might mean sending the fabric on to be recycled in any of the many possible ways fabric can be recycled, depending on their composition.

Circularity is important as a contribution to sustainability throughout all of commerce. While any individual action any one of us takes is unlikely to make a significant difference, the collective small steps each of us take help build up into massive waves of change, and can rethink the entire way humanity exists on this planet.

Common Questions About Circularity

If you haven't thought about it much, you might wonder about circularity. Is it viable? How do you play a role in a circular economy? What challenges might you face?

Economic viability is at the forefront of most businesses' concerns. The truth is that circularity is not just economically viable; it's often even more effective. By returning and repurposing uniforms, you help reduce waste, reduce consumption of raw materials, and support recycling. This can even create jobs, reduce scarcity, and stabilize prices through supply.

Some fear that investing in circular uniform suppliers is more expensive than more linear uniform suppliers, but that's only when you consider initial investments and a somewhat "selfish" view of expenses. Secondary costs, to the environment primarily, are much higher.

What role do you play as a business?

That depends a lot on your business itself. Since we're focusing on uniform strategies today, though, let's limit our discussion to just that.

How to Embrace Circularity in Your Uniform Strategy

Deciding to invest in circularity in your corporate uniform strategy begins with just that: the decision.

The first step is simply to have that vision of investing in circularity and to think about what it means and how it will impact your operations. Since we're talking just about uniforms, it's a relatively low-impact part of business operations, but it still has several considerations.

For example, you won't necessarily be ordering bulk boxes of uniforms to keep in storage and mete out as necessary; instead, you might set up a relationship with a uniform supply company that involves ordering uniforms as needed, and returning them when they've reached the end of their usefulness.

This can involve changing business processes, adding additional expenses and tasks for shipping, and other details, but it's overall a relatively minor change.

One of the benefits you can count on is that uniforms produced by companies invested in circularity are generally more durable and longer lasting. In a typical linear production scheme, products have an incentive to be less durable, so you end up buying more over time. In circularity, the more durable a product is, the better it is for the environment, as well as for the company providing it, which is more likely to have a usable item to repurpose when it is returned.

Another consideration you might have is whether your uniform is highly customized or not. For some brands, a corporate uniform is just a simple colored polo shirt. For others, it might involve custom printing or embroidery. If you aren't sacrificing your brand to do so, shifting to the simpler option might be more beneficial. It may, for example, allow you to access repurposed, second-hand uniforms that are still good quality and durable but cheaper since they've already had a history of use.

In fact, you might even perform an assessment to see whether or not the perceived hit to your brand from shifting to a more generic uniform would be outweighed by the benefits of being invested in a more circular ecosystem.

Another part of this overall shift is to consider the uniforms you opt for from a circular supplier. Consider factors such as:

• The design of the uniform, and how it facilitates longevity. Some brands have uniforms that put style over substance, and while that can be good from a branding perspective, the need to replace worn-out uniforms more frequently might be an added expense you can do away with.
• The choice of materials. By the same token, the choice of material is a big part of circularity. Certain materials, like wool, cotton, and polyester, are both generally more durable and are easier to recycle than other more synthetic materials.
• Modularity in design. While clothing isn't necessarily as modular as other products that can be part of circular investment, there are some ways you can alter a uniform to be more durable and fixable rather than disposable. For example, some uniforms that use extraneous zippers often end up with those zippers damaged and difficult to replace, while a slightly different design may be better for circular utility.

Part of the circular ecosystem is the part where you complete the circle. Learn what the processes are for your chosen uniform supplier, and learn how and when to return uniforms when they are no longer useful.

Adding onto this is the element of awareness and employee training necessary for them to partake in being part of the circular process. It's not enough to have the deal inked with the supplier; your employees need to know that when their uniform is wearing out, they can return it and obtain a replacement, with the key being the return. Sometimes damage happens, and sometimes theft or loss occurs, but in general, your employees should be part of that circularity.

Challenges in Circularity for Businesses

As with many investments in green, sustainable, and progressive processes, there are always going to be some challenges.

The first is simply that change is difficult. It can be challenging to get buy-in from your board of directors. If your uniform system has been fine to date, why change it? Especially if the change represents more potential up-front costs.

You can appeal to change in a variety of ways. Maybe you discuss how the longevity of the uniforms is a benefit to the bottom line over time. Maybe you discuss the marketing benefits of investing in more sustainability in a relatively minor but visible way. Maybe you just get the buy-in of a few people in key positions of power and overrule anyone else. Whatever needs to happen, having that buy-in is crucial.

The next challenge is simply implementation. Shifting from one uniform system to another involves a transition period wherein you spread information about the transition throughout your employees. You need to have a policy and procedure in place for adopting new uniforms and disposing (or recycling) the old ones. You may need a proactive system for sizing and ordering, to ensure everyone gets their uniforms in a timely manner. And, of course, you will need a timeline for the transition to the new uniforms.

It's rare that these sorts of transitions go a hundred percent smoothly, but in general, issues you have can be smoothed over with grace.

Fortunately, the uniform industry is actually fairly progressive when it comes to circularity precisely because it's an area where circularity makes sense and can provide unique benefits with relatively few hurdles. You can read more about this from the perspective of the uniform producers here.

Should You Invest in Circular Uniforms?

Whether or not investing in circular uniforms is a good idea for your business depends on a number of factors.

First, you need to be aware of your starting point. You may actually already be working with a circular brand for uniforms without realizing that's what it is. Or, you might just need to talk to your brand about shifting to a circular model. And, of course, you might need a full transition.

Some of you might not even have uniforms. If that's the case, investing in uniforms is a more significant change for your business. It's something you can do, if it suits your needs, and if you choose to, a circular system is ideal. When you invest in circularity right away, you don't have a transition to make later.

When making the shift to circular uniform ecosystems, you will need to identify and face challenges along the way, from procedures to knowledge to investment. It's all doable; it's just a matter of pulling the trigger and getting it done.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that circularity isn't the only way to be more progressive and responsible with your uniforms. For example, our uniform shirts are not part of a circular ecosystem, but they are as ethically produced and as durable as possible. There are many ways you can strive to minimize emissions and environmental impact without having to embrace a circular uniform system that still involves potentially less green production or long-distance logistics.

The choice, as ever, is yours. The goal is improvement, not perfection, so any step in the right direction is a good one.