The TSA is putting the final touches to an initiative that could help commercial laundries around the world to become more sustainable.
GLARE – Global Laundry and Rental Emissions platform – will allow laundries to easily measure their carbon footprint, and may help to highlight how they can reduce their emissions.
Increasingly operators in industries such as hospitality, healthcare and manufacturing are scrutinising their suppliers’ sustainability credentials – GLARE will give them clear and comparable data about laundries’ emissions.
Measuring a businesses’ carbon footprint is an important step towards sustainability, but there’s an issue: which methodology is best? There are many to choose from, each of which will give different outcomes. The TSA’s Sustainability Steering Group worked with consultant Grain Sustainability to make provisions within the industry’s sustainability roadmap to measure and reduce carbon emissions, using well-established platforms such as Compare Your Footprint.
This platform became the foundation for GLARE – however, the long-term vision is to specifically tailor it for the laundry industry. For example, it could potentially include emissions factors relating to oxygenated bleaches, as used by commercial laundries, and recycled rental textile products.
David Stevens, CEO of the TSA, said: “One of the critical things with this type of platform is that it has to be easy to use, to encourage operators to put in the data. We’ve trialled GLARE with some of our members, and they have described it as flexible, simple and intuitive.”
The TSA’s GLARE initiative received an enthusiastic welcome when it was presented to several other national associations in Europe and to the TRSA (the USA’s Textile Rental Services Association). They have agreed to support and promote it, seeing it as a global solution to a global issue.
GLARE will be launched early in 2025, when full details will be released. In the UK, it will be offered free to TSA members.
Stevens added: “We believe GLARE will make a major contribution to the industry’s carbon net zero objectives.”
