Hema in Schijvens’ circular clothing

Hema in Schijvens’ circular clothing

September 22, 2017

HEMA launched its latest concept at the Tilburg store on 21st September. All of us at Schijvens Corporate Fashion are incredibly proud to form part of this new concept. This store now boasts an entirely new food department, where all the chefs will be walking around in their beautiful 100% recycled clothing from 21st September, plus the shop staff will also be dressed in colourful recycled clothing. And this is something we were asked to realise.

Schijvens’ development in circular corporate fashion

Schijvens has been involved with the development of turning our customers’ old work clothing into new clothing for quite some time. We do this by collecting the clothing from the customer, recycling it and subsequently turning it into new clothing. The entire process of producing recycled work clothing has a huge impact on the environment. This includes an average water saving of 99% and energy savings of 40%, as no new raw materials are needed to produce new yarn. This ultimately leads to a 40% reduction in environmental pollution. We use the old work clothing as our raw materials.

Reduce waste

Quite apart from the fact that recycling water, energy and environmental pollution realises savings, the Netherlands also produces an average of 200 million kilos of textile waste every year. This has made the clothing industry the second most polluting industry in the world. Clothing which ends up on the waste pile is burnt, resulting in it no longer being good for anything. We contribute to reducing this mountain of waste by collecting the clothing from the customer, plus it means we will already have part of the raw materials needed for producing circular work clothing. We currently collect approximately 50,000 items of clothing from an average customer, which fortunately don’t end up on the waste pile.

In short, we are very happy to be able to work together with customers like Hema. We enjoy working together with customers who have the same intrinsic motivation to take steps towards making the chain sustainable.

Should you be interested in finding out what your company can save on energy, water and CO2 emissions, please don’t hesitate to have a look at our savingstool page or contact us and we will work it all out for you.