Why being Gentle for Reflection Stripes on Workwear pays off!

Reflection stripes are an important element of different types of workwear and personal protection clothing. Removal of industrial soiling, such as mechanical oil, and soot or dirt mixed with oil, requires an alkaline washing process.

However, the reflection stripes, which are an integral part of such working garments, are very sensitive in alkaline water conditions and they tend to lose their reflective properties already after 5 to 10 washes cycles,. To avoid this, an additional workstream at the laundry is required which is highly manpower intensive and requires additional investment in reflection stripes. Ecolab claims to have developed a washing process, especially designed to fulfill the diverse washing needs of industrial workwear.

Thomas Duerrschmidt, the company’s scientist, RD&E states:  “We have focused on creating a program that is gentle for the textiles and can deal with the different types of heavy industrial soiling. The program results in a combination of different products that offer great synergies to achieve the best wash result under gentle wash conditions. This combination helps reduce the chemical damage to the textiles and has enabled a textile service company to double wash cycles of textiles with reflective stripes thus significantly reducing waste in their operations.”