Sustainable Journey

Problem

1. Hospitality and textile industries face a number of sustainability challenges, including vast amounts of linens consumption at hotels of which production processes require significant amounts of virgin materials, water and energy, and cause carbon footprint - eg. a 200 room hotel disposes 1.5 tons of linens every year. Still, the private sector faces practical challenges to adapt to sustainability and ethical practices, driven by consumer demands for ethical products and regulatory pressures. 2. Small women's producers 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: 1) We collect discarded linens from our partnering hotel chains; 2) we provide technical -circular design support, capacity building on sustainable production, and market access assistance to underserved women's producer groups / cooperatives for them to produce upcycled hotel amenities from refurbished linens; and 3) we close the loop by enabling our partnering hotel chains to reuse the remanufactured hotel amenities benefiting from the sustainable procurement agreements.

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