Environmental Management

Effectively managing our environmental impact is critical to our operations and is an established practice at SGC. In 2022, we continued to strengthen our sustainability and stewardship practices with new approaches to upcycling end of life materials, reducing material consumption, and developing new eco-friendly products. In pursuit of a sustainable future for our business and planet, we will continue our mission to find new opportunities to mitigate our environmental impacts and foster more sustainable practices.

SGC has been implementing eco-friendly practices into our operations through product designs, manufacturing, and materials sourcing. These efforts have helped us reduce our environmental footprint and create new sustainable product lines. We incorporate eco-friendly practices into production processes by reducing waste and material use, upcycling end-of-life fabrics and products, and redesigning source materials to be less resource intensive. Since 2019, we have created fabrics from used plastics. We mainly utilize recycled plastic bottles to create uniforms and other products, which removes plastic from the environment, generates less carbon emissions compared to virgin fabric materials, and reduces the raw materials needed for production.

Throughout 2022, we witnessed the continued success of our bottle recycling program. We recycled approximately 19.32 million plastic bottles, yielding a 31% year over year Increase. We used those recycled bottles to produce approximately 2.48 million yards of fabric in 2022. Our bottle recycling program has grown significantly over the last 4 years with more bottles being recycled each year and the annual number of bottles recycled increasing by 147% since 2019. As we increase the production of recycled fabrics in the future, we will continue to see an increase in the number of plastic bottle recycled.

Recycled Plastic Content: Innovations and Impacts

In 2022 we launched CORE, our first eco-friendly Carhartt™ healthcare apparel fabric. CORE is made of 50% recycled polyester to reduce the amount of raw material needed.

As part of our commitment to provide more sustainable uniform solutions, we continued to invest in the expansion of our WonderWink Renew™ and WonderWink Thrive™ collections. WonderWink Thrive™ is a healthcare apparel line that we launched in 2022 that is eco-friendly and made of 100% recycled polyester fabric. After a roaring success since their launch, our WonderWink Renew™ and WonderWink Thrive™ products have continued to see high demand from customers in 2022.

We are exploring even more new sustainable material solutions to better care for our planet. We are looking to expand our eco-friendly fabrics beyond recycled plastics by developing new fabrics produced from a variety of materials with different applications. One project utilizes technology that aims to reduce microplastic pollution. Another explores the use of all-natural, plant-based dyes and finishing chemicals. We are excited to experiment with more common items, including coffee waste and old recycled garments, as we work to repurpose existing materials into new items.

As part of a waste reduction initiative, we have started an end-of-life product management program to find new uses for old, worn-out products and fabric scraps. Our program includes a variety of options that can provide solutions for different challenges, such as upcycling clothing to create new apparel, converting apparel waste that cannot be donated into energy, recycling mostly pure materials, and donating worn products. We also have started donating remnants of fabrics from testing labs and other fabric cutting waste that would otherwise become garbage. In 2022, we were able to donate 362 pounds of fabric remnants to philanthropic organizations and schools to be used for new apparel or other creative projects.

Over the last several years we have taken steps to reduce waste in our operations. Many of our facilities are fully paperless and printing, which is done on paper that is Forest Stewardship Council-certified when possible, is only used for required carrier labels and documents that accompany customer shipments. We look to reuse and recycle materials where possible, including reusing storage and shipping cartons, recycling 100% of unusable corrugated and other paper waste, using only fully recyclable packaging materials when we distribute our products, printing on, and not packing with any filling materials, such as styrene peanuts. In 2022, we continued to move forward with eliminating operational waste by reducing the quantity of single-use polyethylene bags used for garment packaging, often replacing them with ones composed of natural fabrics. When we do have a requirement for garment packaging, we use bags made from recycled materials. In addition to these waste mitigation practices, our main distribution center recycled more than 1,700 pounds of obsolete electronics in 2022. As we look forward, we continue to build relationships with reputable suppliers that offer additional sustainable options.