Outwood Family Continues To Do Their Bit For The Environment

A leading family of schools has saved over six hundred thousand plastic bottles from landfill thanks to its uniform being made from recycled bottles by its uniform supplier, Trutex.

Outwood Grange Academies Trust, which consists of over 30 academies including 23 secondary academies. At each of these secondary academies, students wear blazers and trousers that are manufactured by Trutex, made using fabric that has been manufactured from recycled drinks bottles.

The data is taken from sales on the Trutex Direct website for each academy and also each academies Direct to School account, from 1st October 2019 to 30th September 2020.

Katy Bradford, Chief Operating Officer at the Outwood Family, said:

“At Outwood we are passionate about the environment and promoting the importance of sustainability. We are delighted that working with Trutex, we have again managed to save over 600,000 plastic bottles from ending up in landfill having managed a similar figure the previous academic year.

“Our vision is students first, and this goes beyond the classroom for us. The students of today are the adults of tomorrow and it’s our duty to ensure we do all we can to make sure the world they inherit is a healthy one.”

Each Trutex blazer saves around 36 plastic bottles from ending up in a landfill site and boys trousers, 19 bottles. The numbers for Outwood have been calculated from the Outwood blazers and boy’s trousers ordered from Trutex from October 2019 up until September 2020. The Trust provides every child who joins the school with a free set of uniform, including their blazer.

To make a yarn suitable for use in high quality Trutex blazers and boy’s trousers, the plastic bottles are put in together in a bale which is then broken down into flake. The flake then goes through de-polymerisation and re-polymerisation process to make recycled chips which are melted and extruded to make yarn. 

The yarn is then woven into the high quality fabric that is used to make the Outwood Family blazer.

Matthew Easter, CEO at Trutex comments, “Outwood is a long-term and highly valued partner of our business and has contributed a huge amount towards the 9 million bottles Trutex save every year from landfill. As a carbon neutral business we’re always looking at innovative ways to reduce environmental waste and look forward to working with Outwood in the future to continue this work.”

The issue of sustainability is currently being promoted heavily across the Outwood Family, and recently the Trust launched a sustainability tour involving the Outwood penguin.

The Outwood penguin is the result of the first ever Outwood Sustainability Summit which was held last academic year, following a student writing to Outwood CEO, Martyn Oliver, to express her interest in pushing the prominent issue of sustainability with him and the wider Trust.

Katy added:

“We are excited about the sustainability tour, and the Outwood penguin is creating a lot of buzz around the Outwood Family. We need to get young people talking about sustainability; it is important to their futures and it is important that they play their part in protecting the world we live in.”