A recent collaboration with Ecolab helps to reduce energy, waste, and assets and at the same time increases workers’ safety.
We here at Lindström want to inspire people to shine. Not just mentally, but also physically. We can do this best through our workwear, increasing safety for all workers during their long days, rain or shine, bright or dark.
Reflective stripes increase the visibility of workers by at least 300 meters and by approximately 3 seconds. The condition of these reflective stripes is thus crucially important. Only reflective stripes in a good condition, with the reflective feature intact, can increase safety. With the help of Ecolab, we can now wash workwear with reflective stripes at least ten times more than usual, saving around € 40,000 a year.
Around 1 million kilos of textiles are washed a year at one of our Lindström’s plants in Finland, Luumäki. Out of these textiles, 10-15 % have reflective stripes on them. The reflective features of these textiles are usually lost after only five to ten washes, while the other parts of the textiles could be washed 20 to 25 times more. This results in extra work when the reflective stripes must be replaced at a faster pace than the whole garments.
After implementing the Performance Industrial washing solution by Ecolab at Luumäki plant, the results have been inspiring. With lower temperatures used during washing and reduction of rewash, up to 124 000 kWh can be saved a year. This means the annual energy use for 6 individual people, as well as the Luumäki plant’s overall energy consumption decreasing by 3%.
We have focused on creating a program that is gentle for the textiles and can deal with the different types of heavy industrial soiling,” explains Thomas Duerrschmidt, R&D Scientist at Ecolab. “With this solution, we aim to support textile service companies in reducing their spend on new textiles while optimizing their labor needs for textile repairs. The program results in a combination of different products that offer great synergies to achieve the best wash result under gentle wash conditions. This combination helps reduce the chemical damage to the textiles and ensures a higher utilization of a single textile piece. On average, it has enabled the partner textile service company to double wash cycles of textiles with reflective stripes thus significantly reducing waste in their operations.”
The stripes stay in better condition longer, while the textile strength loss is also improved by 59%. Textiles can now have a longer life cycle, helping our planet at the same time.