The peracetic acid is already known in the laundry for hygienic washing at low temperatures. However, peracetic acid can also be used for other applications because of its activity against a wide range of micro-organisms, for example for the hygienic cleaning of surfaces.

The prevention of corona infection is of course very important at this time. According to the WHO, drops from the nose or mouth, which are released when coughing, sneezing and exhaling, are the most important route of infection for Corona. The virus is released into the air via the small droplets and can be transmitted from person to person. The social distance of 1.5 meters is therefore an important measure. Small droplets can also fall on objects and surfaces. Anyone else who touches the contaminated surfaces and then touches their eyes, nose, or mouth with their hands can also contract the virus this way. Regular surface disinfection can reduce the risk of contamination through this route.

Virucidal activity, the ability to deactivate viruses, is therefore very important in surface cleaning agents. Research shows that peracetic acid has a high activity against the SARS CoV-2 virus (the virus that causes corona) or comparable encapsulated viruses. The oxidative power of the peracetic acid affects the outer membrane of this type of encapsulated viruses. This will deactivate the viruses. Peracetic acid, a reaction product of acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide, also has a high activity against all kinds of micro-organisms, such as bacteria, fungi and yeasts, due to its high oxidative potential. This broad anti-microbiological activity and the harmless residues (acetic acid, oxygen and water) make the peracetic acid widely applicable for cleaning surfaces

During the Corona pandemic, there is unfortunately more time available. Therefore you can use this time to  strengthen your knowledge. The E-learning Program of CINET’s World of PTC Business School has a Special Offer until the 1st of July 2020 for those who want to learn more or want to learn together with their colleagues!

• If you purchase all the modules of The Business School’s E-learning curricula (Level C + Level B + Level A), you will get one of the modules for free! 
• If you purchase all the modules of The Business School’s E-learning curricula (Level C + Level B + Level A), you can bring in a colleague who will receive for free the same courses/modules

Find out more about the courses you want to join from The Business School’s E-learning curricula on this link – here! and write us at cinet@cinet-online.com about your choice!

The World of PTC – Business School is a training initiative developed by CINET in cooperation with international suppliers, specifically designed for professional laundry and dry cleaning stakeholders. Through this initiative CINET aims to strengthen and stimulate the development of the PTC (Professional Textile Care) industry.

You will find easy accessible information on Retail Textile Cleaning and Industrial Textile Services on the following levels:

• Starters (Level C): Basic level of education and knowledge for people who likes to start in the textile cleaning industry:
• Operational Excellence (Level B): Advanced level for operators, employees for detail knowledge and skills of the textile cleaning process
• Management (Level A): Excellent level for managers and employees on legislation, improvement methodologies, operational management, business modelling & cost structures and marketing

The product range of The World of PTC – Business School consists of E-learning & (on the job) Training courses, Practical Workshops & Webinars and a vast PTC online library & Book series. Select the courses that match your professional (both individual and company) needs and become a Master in PTC!

More info, on the e-learning courses in The World of PTC – Business School – here!

BYBORRE, the Amsterdam-based textile innovation studio, raises € 3.2 million in a series-A investment round led by SHIFT Invest (Vandebron, The Renewal Workshop, Protix) together with existing investor the Amsterdam Climate and Energy Fund (Vandebron, Aectual) and existing angel investors. The investment will be used to further develop the company’s on-demand textile platform (Textile Development Kit, “TDK”) and expand its global on-demand production network.

The textile industry is the second most polluting industry in the world. The industry produces large amounts of waste and is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions and 20% of global water wastage. Factors that contribute to this are inefficient production processes, a high energy demand and a lot of unnecessary transport of goods and people. BYBORRE challenges the industry to move away from this status quo. The company’s mission is to create conscious creators, designers who are aware of the environmental impact of their product, and enables this group to produce more sustainably.

Photo credit: Morta Amiri

During the COVID-19 outbreak, Swansea commercial laundry CANDO Laundry Services has started  manufacturing face masks for businesses and people wanting to get back to work.

The re-usable masks are made of scrap cotton/polyester linen. These materials would otherwise have been sold in order to make cleaning rags, since they can be cleaned industrially over 200 times. The ‘SafeFace’ non-medical masks are constructed with an additional fold for additional comfort and flexibility and they can be worn on both sides. The company claims to be able to produce up to 10,000 units a week and is expecting to be manufacturing the mask for up to 12 months, until working life gets back to normal. The masks are available in 2- or 3-ply with adjustable straps to ensure universal fit. They are also latex and glue free to stay asymptomatic.

CANDO is a commercial laundry and linen hire service that serves the commercial hospitality, medical and industrial sectors of Wales. Daniel Shepherd, the company’s managing director said: “We have been producing thousands of these masks to bring the UK economy back to work, and with a sense of confidence.”

Zalando, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) and Higg Co recently announced a new collaboration to accelerate a global sustainability standard in the fashion industry. Zalando is the first retailer to use the SAC’s updated version of the Higg Brand & Retail Module (Higg BRM) to make sustainability assessment compulsory for brands selling on its platform. In order to help realize industry-wide change, the company will gather comparable sustainability data from its partner brands to understand where the challenges of the industry lie, both individually and collectively.

The Higg BRM is a tool that provides brands and retailers with a comprehensive way to assess their performance around ethical and environmental parameters such as human rights, fair wages or carbon dioxide emissions. Users can organize their sustainability priorities based on the results. All SAC brand and retail members will eventually use this tool to measure their sustainability performance and progress, making it possible for the apparel industry to compare sustainability at brand level.

SAC Executive Director Amina Razvi stated: “Zalando’s decision to require its partner brands to use the Higg BRM will serve as a catalyst for bringing the industry together towards a standard system for sustainability measurement and achieve lasting change.”

An ARTA study recently published in the AORN Journal – the Voice of Perioperative Nursing –  compared the life-cycle of reusable versus disposable surgical gowns. These gowns help protect patients from exposure to micro-organisms and serve as personal protective equipment for staff members. They are known as personal protective equipment (PPE)

Medical textiles, including surgical gowns, are available as reusable and disposable products. Health care facility administrators and leaders who aim to use environmentally sustainable practices require current data for decision making. The study analysed all activities from the extraction of fossil materials from the earth to the end‐of‐life disposal of reusable and disposable gowns. The researchers included calculations for laundry and wastewater treatment operations and compared the environmental effects of the two surgical gown systems. The results showed that use of reusable gowns rather than disposable gowns reduced natural resource energy consumption (64%), greenhouse gas emissions (66%), blue water consumption (83%), and solid waste generation (84%). This information can be used by facility leaders as they make informed decisions related to gown system selection.

The life cycle assessment (LCA) research was initiated by the American Reusable Textile Association ( ARTA) and the International Association for Healthcare Textile Management (IAHTM).

Recently, au audit was conducted at Newasco De Hoop (Amersfoort, The Netherlands) to be able to recertify the company for a period of three years. With a good outcome because the certificate has been issued. 

Newasco De Hoop is therefore allowed to use the Certex Certificate quality management system. This demonstrates compliance with ISO 9001 and NEN-EN 14065 RABC, the standard that monitors specific hygiene risks within a laundry. The RABC standard can be seen as a counterpart to the HACCP standard known within the catering industry. A complete overview of all Certex-certified companies can be found at www.certex.info.

Certex® benchmark since years!
In The Netherlands Certex® acquired a solid position in industrial textile service. Based on the international acknowledged standards ISO9001:2015 and EN 14065 “Textiles – Laundry processed textiles – Biocontamination control system”. Certex® is developed by the Dutch association for textile service companies together with the Dutch union for quality in hospitals. The established requirements and criteria, with specific values for microbial contamination, were adopted by the Dutch Working Group Infection Prevention in the guideline “Linen in Hospitals”.

Get started with Cerclean®!
The development of such a complete and effective quality and hygiene management system is challenging. To help companies CINET developed Cerclean®, a comprehensive program offering full support to enable anyone to gain essential knowledge. By following the step-by-step approach, a comprehensive quality management and hygiene management system is implemented. A system tailored to the individual company, processes and customers in various market segments in which they operate.

Johnson Service Group (JSG), the Industrial Textiles Services giant, has raised GBP85 million through a share placing, aiming to improve its liquidity and strengthening its balance sheet. The company generated pre-tax profits of £48m in 2019 but the lockdown has had a huge impact on its operations.

The company will issue 73,915,188 new ordinary shares at a price of 115 pence each, with the move to be conducted through an accelerated bookbuilding process. The placing price reflects a discount of 20% to the company’s closing price of 143.00p on May 28th. Shares in Johnson Services Group were 9.3% lower at 129.71p on May 29th in London.

JSG’s hospitality division is forecasted to reach 75% of typical activity by the end of this year and it is expected not to return to previous levels until spring 2022. The company forecasts that its workwear division will improve to around 90% of typical activity this year and predicts it will take the whole of 2021 before revenues normalise.

Revenues during May 2020 are expected to be slightly ahead of April 2020, as a small number of customers reopen. The Board and senior management team have all accepted a temporary salary reduction of 20%, initially for a three-month period from 1 April. Certain other employees have also agreed to a temporary salary reduction of 10%, for the same period.

Lapauw’s president Philippe D’heygere and CEO Steven Renders recently released a message to the industry. First of all, they praised the commitment and hard work of frontline healthcare workers. Additionally, they presented their view of how they expect to operate during and after the Covid-19 crisis.

Throughout the crisis, a reduced company-team – taking all necessary precautions of social distancing – is still working to continue production of already ordered machines. Besides, the company remains shipping equipment all around the world to customers who need it . Thanks to its open spare parts policy, the Belgian factory still has a large stock of components in its on-line support. So far, customers have not experienced significant delays in supply of equipment. Although travelling for technicians was heavily restricted, the company’s  stock of new and second-hand equipment has also helped out some of its healthcare customers  in immediate need of additional capacity.

In their joint message, the two executives hoped for a quick, but controlled reduction of the lockdown measures. They see that Asian countries are starting up again and are looking forward to an increase in orders as global economies begin to recover and return to acceptable levels of business.

ECOTOOL provides information for the management of Professional Textile Care companies according to international best practices. With ECOTOOL, you will know exactly what your eco-footprint is in the complete supply chain based on: CO2 emission, primary energy content of a product, water consumption, consumption of chemicals, land use and mass balance. 

With ECOTOOL, you will have a complete LCA (life cycle analysis) tool of textile products and you will be able to quantify the sustainability of the textile for its entire lifetime. This way, you can benchmark your current operation with other type of textiles or machinery and with OPL / domestic laundry setups

 

Sustainability is a process

Among the benefits, you will also be able to benchmark your operation with a number of processes (e.g. differences between laundry machinery) and a number of standard products like:

• Workwear industry, general
• Workwear food industry
• Roller towel
• Uniform health care
• Bedsheet  health care
• Residential care garments, underwear
• Residential care garments, shirt
• Towel (100% cotton, 80/20 cotton / PET and with recycled cotton

 

Try it! 

Register for ECOTOOL – here! in the Level A e-learning module (Industrial Textile Services – ITS) of CINET’s World of PTC Business School.

For more info, you can contact CINET Secretariat (cinet@cinet-online.com)

 

CINET’s Business School

The World of PTC – Business School is a training initiative developed by CINET in cooperation with international suppliers, specifically designed for professional laundry and dry cleaning stakeholders. Through this initiative CINET aims to strengthen and stimulate the development of the PTC (Professional Textile Care) industry.

You will find easy accessible information on Retail Textile Cleaning and Industrial Textile Services on the following levels:

• Starters (Level C): Basic level of education and knowledge for people who likes to start in the textile cleaning industry:
• Operational Excellence (Level B): Advanced level for operators, employees for detail knowledge and skills of the textile cleaning process
• Management (Level A): Excellent level for managers and employees on legislation, improvement methodologies, operational management, business modelling & cost structures and marketing

The product range of The World of PTC – Business School consists of E-learning & (on the job) Training courses, Practical Workshops & Webinars and a vast PTC online library & Book series. Select the courses that match your professional (both individual and company) needs and become a Master in PTC!