The world focus on a growing “Green Agenda” has caught the imagination of Taste International, a specialist niche glove manufacturer under the Aquila brand, who have taken up the challenge in the way that small companies can, by making a series of small steps forward. Trying in their own way to lead with fully recyclable (compostable) packaging and extended life gloves – reducing energy use and waste in the hope that others will follow. For example, demand is high at the moment for cut protection gloves across many industries, such as building, food production, energy and engineering – so it is good to find that their own proprietary Alkimos cut yarn, which Aquila have developed for their cut protection gloves, can be laundered up to 14 times without compromising the protection or usability of the glove.
This is a small, dynamic company producing high quality, high performing industrial gloves with a green agenda, looking to do right by the planet. Obviously, as an industry PPE manufacture is one that involves energy use and waste production as an inevitable consequence of protecting people from harm in a wide range of hazardous situations, so this is a complex issue only to be resolved by glove producers working in a unified way.
Fortunately, the Taste Aquila brand is able to move quickly by reason of its size and focus, but solutions to the environmental problems raised by use of PPE are not soluble at a single stroke as they depend greatly on outside raw material suppliers – so their MD Mr Kwan Lo explains “we do what we can now, while developing better solutions for the future.”
This is a continuous process for Taste International who are planning a series of actions for their Aquila brand so that it may play its part in developing a better solution for industrial PPE. The Aquila team is aware that their high performing gloves offer protection to a most valuable asset – our hands – and that since industrial gloves are without question, an essential PPE component, we owe it to our workforce and to the planet to choose wisely, so that we may achieve maximum protection with minimum waste.
In comparison with many cheap gloves available today the extended life offered by high-quality gloves can reduce energy usage and waste, with a corresponding reduction in cost. Since gloves are rarely a one-time purchase this saving, both financial and environmental, accrues over time and massively reduces the cost of ownership. What is the next step for Aquila? Probably the next major step will need progress in the materials and other industries such as laundering and recycling, coupled with greater use of renewable non-polluting energy in the supply chain. These are common issues for all of the worlds manufacturing industries – Aquila will continue to play its part.
www.aquilaglove.com
