You've probably seen people wearing uniforms—a shirt, jacket, or other garment with their company logo—on your way to work, out for a weekend stroll, or simply going about your daily activities. Uniforms are a positive thing, as employees are one of a company's most valuable assets. Wearing them helps a company differentiate its identity and brand, setting it apart from the competition and building trust with customers.
Now, imagine seeing someone on the news or social media one day who was arrested for committing a crime while wearing your company uniform or a t-shirt with your logo. Then you throw it in the trash, polluting the environment and taking over 50 years to decompose. Before you know it, it's trending, memes are circulating, and criticisms are being leveled at the brand and/or company's poor management and control over this crucial element. An event like this can severely damage the reputation and image of any company, regardless of its size or industry.
But what can be done as an organization? Employee turnover is one of the biggest problems for Human Resources departments in any company, and keeping track of each employee's uniforms becomes an extremely complicated task. In Mexico, employee turnover reaches a rate of 16.75%, the highest among Latin American countries.
For example, in our country, the restaurant industry alone is valued at nearly 250,000 billion pesos. According to data from the National Chamber of the Restaurant and Seasoned Food Industry (Canirac), the food sector generates around 700,000 million direct jobs and nearly three million indirect jobs in Mexico, but it also has one of the highest employee turnover rates. Where do all those uniforms that are left behind end up? What happens to those thousands of garments?
Doesn't it make you nervous? Even today, despite these high turnover rates, there are still organizations that don't ensure the proper disposal of their uniforms after their useful life, potentially becoming victims of misuse of their corporate image or finding themselves involved in an unfortunate and inconvenient incident due to not having taken the necessary measures with a uniform that was mistakenly discarded.
That is why at GDI Uniforms, committed to the environment as a Socially Responsible Company and taking care of our clients' corporate image as their best business partners, we offer our clients the Uniform Destruction and Controlled Disposal Service, where our business partners protect their brand and have the assurance that their uniforms will only be used to create recycled and environmentally friendly products.
Our service includes collection by GDI or shipment by the client of obsolete uniforms, destruction of garments to prevent misuse, photographic evidence and documentation certifying the destruction of all garments, and recycling. The resulting material is reprocessed to create new byproducts: carpet fabrics, upholstery yarns, new garments, and so on.
Vanessa Orendain García – Account Executive at GDI