Most businesses think carefully about buying workwear and not at all about what happens to it at the end. But a garment with your logo on it is still your brand once it is in a charity shop, a skip or on someone who no longer works for you. This guide covers the three questions that come up: getting kit back from leavers, protecting the brand when garments go, and disposing of the fabric responsibly.

Why it matters more for branded kit than plain

A plain navy polo in a textile bank is nobody's problem. A polo with your company name on the chest can end up worn by someone who was never employed by you, which matters if your staff have access to customers' homes, secure sites or anywhere a uniform is used as a form of identification. It also matters for a simpler reason: a faded, torn garment with your logo on it does not do the brand any favours wherever it turns up.

Recovering workwear from leavers

The first place old branded kit goes astray is with people leaving the business. A few habits make recovery routine rather than awkward:

• Put it in the uniform policy. State clearly whether kit is returned on leaving and who it is handed to. See our company uniform policy guide for what else belongs in that document.
• Keep an issue record. If you know each person was issued three polos and a softshell, you know what to ask for. Our uniform allowance and rotation guide covers a simple way to track this.
• Make return part of the leaving checklist, alongside keys, fobs and equipment, rather than a separate request after they have gone.
• Decide what to do with returned kit. Clean, good-condition garments in common sizes can go back into stock for new starters. Worn or personalised items should be disposed of, not reissued.

When kit is genuinely worn out

Our guide on when to replace workwear covers how to judge that a garment has reached the end of its working life. Once it has, the choice is between removing the branding before disposal, disposing of it in a way that keeps it out of circulation, or both.

Removing or defacing the logo

Embroidered logos are hard to remove cleanly, and unpicking them on a worn garment is rarely worth the time. A quicker approach for kit that is going into textile recycling is to cut through the logo with scissors so it cannot be worn as a uniform. Printed logos can be treated the same way. For a large batch after a rebrand, it is simpler to bag garments for recycling as textiles rather than clothing, which most collectors will accept.

Textile recycling

Worn-out cotton, polycotton and polyester garments can go into textile recycling rather than general waste. Many local authorities run textile collection points, and there are commercial collectors who will take bulk bags from businesses. Check with the collector whether they resell wearable items or process everything as fibre, because that decides whether the logo needs defacing first. Hi-vis with reflective tape, waterproofs with membranes and garments with metal fittings may be handled differently, so ask.

PPE has its own rules

Safety boots, helmets and other PPE that has reached the end of its life should be disposed of in a way that stops it being reused as protective equipment. A cracked helmet or a boot with a worn sole is not safe for anyone, and giving it away or leaving it in a skip where it can be picked up passes the problem on. Contaminated PPE, for example from chemical or asbestos work, is a waste-stream question for your own risk assessment and waste contractor, not a textile-recycling one.

Reducing what needs disposing of in the first place

The cheapest garment to dispose of is the one you did not over-order. A few buying habits shrink the pile:

• Order free samples and get sizes right first time, so fewer garments are issued and then abandoned because they do not fit. Our sizing guide helps.
• Set a sensible allowance per person rather than issuing more than a rota needs.
• Use a trade account to reorder small quantities as people join, rather than holding a large buffer of stock in every size.
• Choose fabrics that last. A heavier polo that survives two years of washing replaces two lighter ones.

The short version

Treat branded workwear as company property with a start and an end. Write recovery into the uniform policy and the leaving checklist, deface or remove logos before kit leaves your control, use textile recycling for worn-out fabric, and dispose of end-of-life PPE so it cannot be reused. Plan old stock before a rebrand, and buy in a way that leaves less to deal with later.