Category: News

TSA launches new Wellbeing Hub for its members

As part of its commitment to helping the laundry industry to create a supportive and inclusive working environment for its staff, the Textile Services Association has launched a Wellbeing Hub for its members. The Hub provides resources to help laundry businesses support their employees with any mental health challenges they may face. This includes bitesize video guides aimed at promoting wellbeing in the workplace.

The Wellbeing Hub is the latest addition to the TSA’s portfolio of training and support resources tailored to the needs of the laundry industry. The bitesize videos examine issues surrounding wellbeing in the workplace. The Hub also provides access to materials from the TSA’s mental health support drive, which includes training courses and webinars. These are also suitable for sharing with staff.

A laundry will typically supply linen through a rental agreement, collect it when dirty, wash, repair, or replace it if needed, and then return it. This method is intrinsically sustainable because it embraces a circular business model.

The laundry operations aim to make these textile products last as long as possible, even after hundreds of uses with highly optimised energy, water, and detergent usage. However, the preciousness of these commodities is often not fully realised in several parts of the value chain, resulting in significant levels of unaccounted stock volumes.

The TSA reports that annual stock losses on rented linen and towelling to the hospitality industry could be over 60%. For its rented linen and uniforms service to the NHS, the losses are nearly 90%. The scale of this waste becomes substantial when you factor in that the TSA’s members process over 50 million items of linen each week for hospitality and healthcare.

The TSA is driving the change by engaging with its end-user sectors to raise awareness, and providing training support for housekeepers and laundry staff through well-designed guidance and bitesize videos such as Pasha the Pillowcase. The training focuses on the environmental impact of these annual losses, which on water alone equates to 900 million baths tubs of water in the UK for the hospitality sector and 300 million for the NHS.

TSA’s 2024 National Congress provides a day of insight and networking

The Textile Services Association (TSA) has announced the lineup for its 2024 National Congress, which takes place on the 1st February 2024 at the Titanic Hotel in Liverpool. Tickets are going fast, so if you’re a laundry owner or executive who has received an invitation and want to attend you should act fast to ensure you don’t miss out.

The event gives attendees a chance to network with representatives of the biggest companies in the UK, discuss important issues in the laundry industry, and gain insight from a number of keynote speakers and the team from the TSA themselves.

TSA launches simple to understand video guides aimed at reducing lost or damaged linen

Each year the hotel industry loses over 12.5 million pieces of linen, which equates to 61% of the total stock of linen and towelling.  It’s not just a massive cost, but also a real blow to the industry’s sustainability targets.  Now the Textile Services Association (TSA), in association with UKHospitality and the UK Housekeeping Association, has created a simple to understand video designed to train staff about the importance of looking after linen – and the environmental impact of wasting it.  The video tells the life story of Pasha the pillowcase, including how hotel linen is made, how to take care of it, and how looking after it enhances sustainability and saves money.

It’s not just the linen itself that is wasted.  Replacing the 12.5 million lost pieces of linen with freshly made fibres generates 39,000 tonnes of carbon.  Growing the cotton consumes vast amounts of water – the equivalent of 937 million bathtubs full!  That’s enough for every person in the UK to have 14 baths. 

“These are huge figures,” says David Stevens, CEO of the TSA.  “If we are to meet net zero targets we need to find ways to lengthen the lifespan of these textiles.”

TSA’s expanded Infinite Textiles recycling scheme aims to reduce carbon footprint of industry

The TSA has launched the second phase of its Infinite Textiles scheme. This significantly expands the scope of the project, and is an exciting opportunity to help reduce the carbon footprint of the laundry industry and of its customers in sectors such as hospitality, manufacturing and healthcare. The accreditation scheme in its latest form is aimed at enabling the laundry industry and its end-user sectors to improve the overall life cycle of its textile products – beginning at the first step in supply all the way to managing the end of primary use.

Until recently, the only established route of ‘recycling’ was to entrust the textile products at the end of primary use to rags and wipers manufacturing processes, which were then either incinerated or sent to landfill after one or two uses. For example, in the hospitality industry, over 6000 tonnes of textiles are currently sent to waste every year. If this can be reused, it can significantly reduce carbon emissions and further improve the sustainability credentials of what is already an incredibly circular model. These products come to the end of their primary use after over a hundred wash cycles.

The association enters a new age of increased awareness

As part of its mission to ensure the interests of its members and the industry are represented, the Textile Services Association (TSA) has built relationships with MPs across all major parties. They are helping to raise the profile of the industry at governmental level. This would not have been possible without the work of TSA’s newly formed Industry Lobbying Steering Group and, in turn, the connections members have made with their local MPs. the level of wastage.

“We have to raise awareness about the importance of the commercial laundry industry to a number of key sectors including, healthcare, hospitality, pharmaceutical and food,” says Emma Andersson, Director of the TSA. Recently the association organised a cross party meeting at Westminster which was attended by six MPs. Among other things, they discussed the difficulties many laundries faced during lockdown due to the lack of government support. This had been an important catalyst behind the TSA’s renewed lobbying efforts to ensure that the government has the information it needs to include the laundry industry in its thinking.

In particular, with the latest Covid booster programme, frontline health and social care workers are eligible for the vaccine in order to protect themselves and the health of patients. As commercial laundries process over 90% of the NHS’s textiles and need to meet strict standards of hygiene, the TSA contacted MPs to ask if the government was planning on making this booster available to commercial laundry employees. The TSA pointed out that, without the services provided by commercial laundries, 90% of hospitals would be forced to close after just one day.

TSA fact finding visit to Belgium underlines potential for improvements in care home sector

‘Food for thought – and we need to follow the European model.’ Those were the main findings of The Textile Services Association’s (TSA) fact finding mission to Belgium to investigate the difference between practices there and in the UK for laundering in the care home sector. The two day trip took place in early October, with thirty attendees, comprising of TSA commercial laundry members and supply partners to the industry.

On October 3rd they visited CLOVA, a specialist care home processing laundry near Brussels. On October 4th there were various presentations including two panel discussions. The first was by laundry operators from Holland and Belgium, who shared best practice ideas. The second featured supply chain partners who talked about how innovations in machinery, software and chemicals are assisting in meeting specific care home requirements. In addition, TSA presented some of the early findings of its research into the UK care home sector, which was undertaken in partnership with De Montfort University (DMU).

The TSA plans campaign to improve sustainability.

The NHS loses over 80% of its linen every year. It’s a massive drain on resources and very much against sustainability targets. Now the TSA (Textile Services Association) is working with the NHS to put together a programme to help reduce the level of wastage.