Sustainable Solutions & Uniform Recycling

We are on a journey to improve our sustainability and are keen to share it with you. Recently, we discovered that the garment industry is the second biggest polluter in the world – second to the Oil Industry, around 25% of landfill is unwanted textiles.

At Arrow, we are taking steps to reduce the impact we have on the environment, and we set a 'Sustainability Action Team' to lead this project. We trust our efforts will give back to our immediate community and better the lives of those around us. It’s the right thing to do.

Our team have jumped all over this opportunity and are looking for ways to provide you with ‘better’ conscious solutions when choosing your uniforms. So remember to consider the environmental impact your uniform has when you are next speaking with us, as we may be able to offer you better solutions.

The life cycle of a uniform is something we often talk about around here, like what is happening to uniforms when people have finished using them? For the past five years we have offered a Uniform Recycle programme to our customers. Part of the uniform recycle programme looks at ways to reallocate and reuse unwanted uniforms in a way that is sustainable; avoiding end of product life landfill disposal and opting to re-construct them in to other products like boxing bags, or donate them to local organisations like Dress for Success, The Salvation Army, The Koha Shed and the SPCA.

One of things we hear often, is that you is that you want to use our programme, but you are worried about your uniforms being ‘out there’ for the general public to use. We can assure you that we have systems in place to ensure this isn't the case.

Recently we began partnering with Earthlink. Located in Lower Hutt, they are not far from the Arrow head office and they specialise is using preloved business apparel and up-cycling it into trendy clothes for children.

This is exciting for us and for you, as Earthlink will remove any logos or distinguishing factors about the uniform and simply up-cycle the fabrics, so they become unrecognisable. You can check out their web-site here or visit their factory shop. Let us know if you are interested in learning more about using our uniform recycle programme.

As for our sustainability journey at Arrow, we will keep you updated and let you know the new and exciting projects we take on.