Linens For Life™
Our Linens for Life Program, partnered with UN Women, Diversey, and hotel chains, repurposes used hotel linens into upcycled products for hotels' reuse across Türkiye, the Middle East, and Africa.
Linens for Life's concept evolved from an earlier Diversey initiative in South Asia. Our motivation was to do more than just a CSR project. We worked to structure the process into a circular economy model rather than relying on donation-based approaches. This upgraded version seeks to create a sustainable social business without the need for continuous external support. The inspiration lies in making a tangible, lasting impact on society and the environment, aligning with the values of social responsibility and environmental consciousness.
Background
The hospitality industry faces Sustainability Challenges
Hospitality and textile industries face a number of sustainability challenges, including the vast amount of linens consumed at hotels, whose production processes require significant amounts of virgin materials, water, and energy and cause a significant carbon footprint. Still, the private sector faces practical challenges in adapting to sustainability and ethical practices, driven by consumer demands for ethical products and regulatory pressures.
a 200-room hotel disposes of 1.5 tons of linens every year
Small women's producer groups face systematic and logistical barriers that hinder their entry into the market and their ability to thrive. These barriers are systemic inequities and a lack of access to crucial resources like market opportunities, business knowledge, and design innovation. Although NGOs are striving to make a significant impact on underserved communities, they also often lack market knowledge and experience challenges of establishing long-term sustainable programs.
Solution
We have designed a circular value chain mechanism where we collect discarded linens from our partnering hotel chains; we provide technical-circular design support, capacity building on sustainable production, and market access assistance to underserved women's producer groups for them to produce upcycled hotel amenities from refurbished linens. Finally, we close the loop by enabling our partnering hotel chains to reuse the remanufactured hotel amenities benefiting from the sustainable procurement agreements.
