David Stevens, CEO of the Textile Services Association, reports.
It’s been a few months since the Textile Services Association (TSA) introduced the mascot Pasha the Pillowcase to the world. Pasha has the mission of educating staff in the hospitality and laundry sectors about the importance of handling linen correctly as part of the drive for sustainability. With about 61 per cent of the industry’s annual stock of linen being lost each year, finding ways to reduce this will play a vital part in reaching Carbon Net Zero targets for both sectors.
Since we launched the Pasha video, it has been taken up by some of the largest hotel, leisure and laundry groups as a key part of staff training and has been getting great feedback as a useful way of illustrating the importance of this issue.
For example, Fernanda Lewis, executive housekeeper at London’s Goring Hotel and the UK Housekeepers Association’s (UKHA) London chair, (the UKHA is the professional association of UK housekeepers), told us she thought it was very innovative. “I’ve never seen a training video like it,” she said. “The TSA has managed to present the issue of sustainability and how it applies to the day to day work of hotel staff in a fun but understandable way.”
Meanwhile Pasha was such a hit at Aeroserve, the company specialising in providing laundry services for the healthcare and hospitality sectors, that they have begun using it in other ways to help spread the message of the need to look after linen. They now print out a picture of Pasha and stick it on every laundry box on its way back to customers, as a fun way to remind people of the correct way to handle textiles.
Bourne Leisure, one of the UK’s leading hotel and holiday companies, started to implement the video within its training procedures and carried out a case study to see how it helped to reduce the amount of linen loss.
The environmental and financial consequences of prematurely lost or damaged linen in the UK’s hotel industry are substantial. To replace the 12.5 million pieces of linen lost within the hotel industry with fresh linen would generate 39,000 tonnes of carbon and require the equivalent of 937 bathtubs of water to grow the cotton. Ensuring that the textiles have as long a working life as possible can have a significant impact on the sustainability of any business that relies on it, and has been one of the TSA’s strategic priorities for many years. The Pasha initiative is just one of the ways we have been working with our members and the industries they serve to help reduce loss of linen stock and the need for fresh material to replace it.
This is a critical issue in the hospitality sector. Solving it will have to be a collaborative process. Until now there’s been very little information about sustainability of linens available. There’s no easy overnight solution, but we think (and the feedback confirms) that the Pasha video is a great way to raise awareness of the problem and help to begin creating the knowledge and mindset needed to reduce unnecessary product loss.
We are continuing to introduce Pasha at UKHA meetings for the southeast and northwest regions, as well as at its hospitality round table meeting where more major hotel groups confirmed they are looking to begin implementing the videos as part of their training.
The Pasha videos can be found on the TSA’s website: www.tsa-uk.org
The TSA is the trade association for the textile care services industry. The TSA represents commercial laundry and textile rental businesses. Membership ranges from family-run operations through to large, multi-national companies.
www.tsa-uk.org
About the contributor
David Stevens
CEO
Textile Services Association