Making An Impact

A thorough pre-demolition audit identified significant quantities of materials suitable for reuse within the 30 Duke Street demolition project in St James’s, London. Continuing our long-standing commitment to material reuse, John F Hunt salvaged 8 tonnes of structural steel and approximately 1,800 interior items during the demolition of two adjoining buildings.

The original 1960s building, a concrete 6-storey structure, contained 16 tonnes of steel beams, of which 8 tonnes were reused in the project’s temporary works. The remainder of the salvaged steel was transported to the steel stockholder, EMR, for reprocessing in further projects. The steel reuse saved approximately 12tCO2e when compared to using newly manufactured alternatives.

Wood, bricks, furniture, radiators, windows, glass partitions, decorations, storage tubs, electronics, textiles, aluminium, ceramics, paints, adhesives, and a boiler were donated to organisations such as Hackney City Farm, M01Youths, D.R.C.A. Community Association and other local organisations, artists, and community groups. The estimated financial savings from reusing these items in new projects were around £26,000.

Commit

John F Hunt signed the pledge, reinforcing our well-established commitment to the circular economy and environmental sustainability through our demolition and construction operations. These practices have been embedded across all our projects over several years, reducing the need for additional processing and helping preserve embodied value.

Plan

By developing more efficient technologies and monitoring recycling and waste minimisation, we maximise the reuse of as many materials as possible, followed by secondary material use, lessening the demand for primary resources. Innovation is essential for both growing our businesses and protecting our surroundings by creating sustainable solutions.

We consistently achieve a 99% diversion rate of non-hazardous waste from landfill, while actively developing new reuse pathways to keep resources in circulation for as long as possible. This will not stop.

The John F Hunt Group consists of 21 businesses, and in addition to the construction-related activities, our IT company also operate secondary-use channels. 

TechVertu erases data and secures damaged laptops and phones, delivering them to the ‘Every Child Online’ charity. Here, they refurbish and donate items to those who need them most, giving children and young people the opportunity to learn and connect. Those items that are beyond repair are disassembled, and the components made into jewellery or pieces of art.

Partner

We are committed to working collaboratively with our clients, stakeholders, and supply chain to ensure both first and secondary material use.

We will continue to build our outlet framework of reuse organisations, such as Saint Gobain (glass), EMR (steel), Envirocycle (carpet tiles) and Material Index (Internal Fixtures).

This will help feed through to schools, charities, artists, and community groups, such as Hackney City Farm and Studio Tip.

Act

We undertake extensive, in-depth pre-demolition and site audits on all our construction projects nationwide, collaborating closely with clients and stakeholders at the embryonic stages to identify every opportunity for reuse and recycling.

We shall monitor our Group-wide performance, improve, and share in the hope that we can influence others to drive long-term behaviour change within the industry.

Share

John F Hunt actively promotes and communicates circular initiatives across all our platforms to showcase their positive impact and drive industry-wide change.

Our Sustainability team will continue to speak at events such as Footprint+ and Futurebuild to show what is possible.

We will share all our practices with all those who will listen and implement.

Building the UK’s Circular Workwear Infrastructure

“Creating the partnerships, infrastructure and innovation that enable organisations to reduce costs, cut carbon and transform workwear into a valuable circular asset.”

“The future of workwear is circular—and the infrastructure to make it possible is being built today.”

Every year, millions of workwear, uniform and PPE garments are removed from service despite retaining significant functional life, creating unnecessary costs, avoidable carbon emissions and the loss of valuable resources.

ACS Clothing is changing that.

Drawing on almost 30 years of expertise in garment inspection, repair, refurbishment, sanitisation and reverse logistics, we are developing one of the UK’s first end-to-end Circular Workwear Infrastructures. Through collaboration with employers, manufacturers, suppliers, academia, technology partners and the public sector, we are creating the systems, evidence and operational capability needed to keep garments in circulation for longer.

This is more than a service—it is shared infrastructure that enables organisations to embrace circularity without building their own capability from scratch. By extending garment life through reuse, repair, redistribution and responsible recycling, organisations can reduce procurement costs, lower Scope 3 emissions, strengthen ESG performance and build more resilient supply chains.

Our ambition reaches beyond workwear. We believe this collaborative model can provide a blueprint for the wider fashion and textile industry, helping prepare the UK for future circular economy policies while demonstrating that sustainability and commercial success can go hand in hand.

We are building more than infrastructure—we are building a movement. One that invites organisations of every size to help shape the future of circular workwear and demonstrate what can be achieved when industry, government and academia work together for the greater good.

Commit

ACS believes the future of workwear isn’t about buying more sustainable garments—it’s about creating the infrastructure that keeps every garment in use for as long as possible.

Every year, millions of workwear garments, uniforms and items of PPE are removed from service despite retaining significant functional life. They are replaced because employees leave, branding changes, garments are over-issued or procurement processes favour replacement over recovery. The result is unnecessary cost, avoidable carbon emissions and millions of garments becoming waste long before they should.

We recognised that the challenge wasn’t a lack of sustainable products. The real barrier was the absence of the infrastructure needed to make circularity practical.

Our commitment was therefore far more ambitious than launching another recycling initiative.

We committed to building one of the UK’s first Circular Workwear Infrastructures—creating the systems, expertise, technology and partnerships that enable organisations to recover, inspect, sanitise, repair, debrand, redistribute and recycle garments at scale. Through our Circular Workwear as a Service model, employers, manufacturers and workwear providers can access this infrastructure without investing in their own facilities or capabilities, making circularity simpler, lower risk and commercially attractive.

This commitment directly reflects the Circularity in Practice Pledge. We have developed practical action plans with customers, partnered with manufacturers, universities, charities and public sector organisations, and are demonstrating through live pilots that circular workwear delivers measurable commercial, environmental and social benefits. Every partnership strengthens the infrastructure, improves the model and builds confidence that circularity can become business as usual.

We also believe this work could become an important precursor to the UK’s future implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for textiles. Legislation alone will not deliver circularity. Success depends on having the infrastructure capable of recovering, inspecting, redistributing and recycling products safely and efficiently. By proving these systems work today, we can help remove barriers to wider adoption tomorrow.

Most importantly, we believe no organisation can transform an industry alone. Lasting change will only happen through partnership. By bringing together employers, manufacturers, suppliers, academia, charities and government, we can create the infrastructure that enables circular workwear to become the norm. If successful, the model has the potential to transform not only the workwear sector but also provide a blueprint for accelerating circularity across the wider UK fashion and textile industry.

Plan

From the beginning, we recognised that no single organisation had all the answers. Building a Circular Workwear Infrastructure would require a shared vision, an open mind and a willingness to learn, adapt and innovate together.

Rather than designing a solution for one customer or one sector, we developed a flexible methodology capable of evolving through collaboration. We listened to employers, manufacturers, suppliers, universities, technology partners, charities and public sector organisations to understand the practical barriers preventing circular workwear from becoming mainstream. Their insights have shaped every stage of our action plan and continue to influence how the model develops.

Our approach has been deliberately iterative. Every conversation, pilot and partnership provides new evidence that helps refine the infrastructure, improve operational processes and identify new opportunities. We believe the strongest circular solutions are not created in isolation—they are co-designed with the organisations that will ultimately use them.

By mapping the complete garment lifecycle, we identified where value was being lost and developed an end-to-end circular operating model covering collection, reverse logistics, inspection, sanitisation, repair, debranding, redistribution, resale, fibre recycling and transparent environmental reporting. Alongside this, we established a comprehensive measurement framework to quantify garment recovery rates, procurement cost avoidance, Scope 3 carbon reductions, waste diversion, resource efficiency, social value and wider business benefits.

Our plan is designed for the future as well as the present. It incorporates Digital Product Passports, RFID traceability, AI-enabled garment inspection and emerging circular economy legislation, ensuring the infrastructure continues to evolve alongside technology, policy and market expectations.

Most importantly, we have remained true to one guiding principle: this is bigger than ACS. Our ambition is not simply to build a successful service, but to help create the infrastructure that enables an entire industry to become circular. That means listening more than talking, partnering rather than competing, sharing rather than protecting knowledge, and continuously adapting as we learn.

Because ultimately, this isn’t just about workwear. It’s about creating a more resilient economy, supporting UK industry, protecting our planet and leaving a better legacy for future generations.

Partner

The opportunity isn’t simply to recover garments. It’s to build the infrastructure that enables an entire industry to become circular.

At ACS, we believe no single organisation can achieve that alone.

The circular economy will not be built by individual organisations acting in isolation. It will be built through partnerships that create the shared infrastructure every organisation can access and benefit from.

That belief underpins everything we are doing.

We are bringing together employers, workwear manufacturers, suppliers, technology innovators, universities, policymakers and industry bodies to co-design and validate a new Circular Workwear Infrastructure for the UK. Together, we are proving that extending garment life is not only environmentally responsible but commercially viable, operationally practical and capable of delivering measurable social value.

Our pilot programmes span utilities, construction, housing, healthcare and facilities management, providing real-world evidence across diverse industries. Academic partners are independently measuring environmental, financial and operational outcomes, while technology partners are advancing digital product passports, AI-enabled garment identification, RFID traceability and data-driven reporting. Every collaboration strengthens the evidence, capability and confidence needed to accelerate industry-wide adoption.

Our ambition extends beyond supporting individual organisations. We want to enable manufacturers and workwear providers to offer fully circular solutions to their customers, with ACS providing the operational infrastructure behind the scenes. By sharing expertise, infrastructure and innovation, we can make circularity accessible to organisations of every size without each needing to build its own capability.

We also believe this collaborative model can help prepare the UK for future Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for textiles. By demonstrating that the infrastructure, partnerships and operating models already exist, we can help reduce barriers to implementation and provide a practical blueprint for how EPR could work successfully across the wider fashion and textile industry.

This is an invitation to collaborate. If you share our ambition to reduce waste, lower carbon emissions, improve resource efficiency and unlock new commercial opportunities through circularity, we would welcome the opportunity to work together.

By combining the strengths of business, government and academia, we can build the infrastructure that transforms workwear today—and helps create a truly circular textile economy for generations to come.

Act

We implemented our Circular Workwear as a Service model by embedding circularity into everyday workwear management, making reuse the default option rather than disposal. Rather than creating another recycling initiative, we developed the operational infrastructure needed to keep workwear, uniforms and PPE in circulation for as long as possible, transforming circular principles into practical day-to-day operations.

Our model integrates collection, reverse logistics, inspection, grading, professional sanitisation, repair, refurbishment, debranding, redistribution and responsible recycling into a single managed service. Every returned garment is professionally assessed to determine its highest-value recovery route, ensuring reuse is always prioritised before recycling. This enables organisations to recover garments that still retain significant functional value, extending their useful life while reducing unnecessary replacement purchases.

The model has already been implemented through pilot projects across multiple sectors, demonstrating that garments traditionally considered waste can instead be recovered, reused and kept in circulation for longer. Early results have shown the potential to reduce textile waste, lower procurement costs, avoid unnecessary carbon emissions and improve resource efficiency, providing organisations with practical evidence that circular workwear can deliver measurable environmental and commercial benefits.

Most importantly, the programme is changing everyday behaviours. Organisations are beginning to embed garment recovery into procurement, asset management and operational processes, while employees are encouraged to return workwear at the end of use rather than dispose of it. This simple but fundamental shift changes the perception of workwear from a disposable consumable to a managed business asset whose value can be retained through multiple life cycles.

To support long-term adoption, we have integrated environmental reporting, carbon measurement and financial performance into the service. This enables organisations to quantify garment recovery rates, procurement cost avoidance, waste reduction and Scope 3 emissions, allowing future purchasing decisions to be based on robust evidence rather than assumptions. Because the model integrates with existing operational processes, organisations can adopt circular workwear without fundamentally changing how they manage their workforce or supply chains.

Our ambition extends beyond individual pilots. We are creating the shared infrastructure that enables employers, manufacturers and workwear suppliers to adopt circular business models without each organisation having to develop its own recovery capability. By making reuse practical, measurable and commercially viable, we believe Circular Workwear as a Service can establish a new industry standard—demonstrating that keeping products in use for longer is not only environmentally responsible, but also commercially beneficial and essential to building a more resilient UK textile industry.

Share

From the outset, we recognised that no single organisation can transform the workwear industry alone. The circular economy will not be built by individual organisations acting in isolation. It will be built through partnerships that create the infrastructure every organisation can use.

That belief has shaped every stage of our journey.

As a small team with big ambitions and an even bigger purpose, we have focused as much on collaboration as innovation. We have shared our learning through industry conferences, circular economy forums, university partnerships, webinars, business networks and direct engagement with organisations across the UK and Europe. We have spoken openly about both our successes and our challenges because we believe collaboration accelerates innovation.

Our approach has always been to demonstrate rather than simply describe. We have offered free pilot projects and trials with organisations across utilities, construction, housing, healthcare and facilities management, generating practical evidence that circular workwear is commercially viable, operationally achievable and environmentally beneficial. Every pilot strengthens the business case for wider adoption.

Alongside industry, we continue to seek new collaborations with universities, technology innovators, manufacturers and workwear suppliers to develop the next generation of circular solutions. We are actively engaging with organisations such as WRAP, Zero Waste Scotland, the United Nations, the British Chambers of Commerce and international partners across Europe to share knowledge, explore new models and accelerate the transition towards a circular textile economy.

Increasingly, our focus is moving beyond individual pilots towards developing new circular models for specific product categories and industry sectors, creating scalable solutions that can be replicated nationally and internationally.

We believe this collaborative infrastructure can also help prepare the UK for future Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), providing policymakers and industry with practical evidence that circular systems can work at scale.

Our ambition is simple but bold: to make Circular Workwear as a Service the new industry standard and create a blueprint capable of transforming the wider fashion and textile industry.

The opportunity isn’t simply to recover garments. It’s to build the infrastructure that enables an entire industry to become circular.

If you share that ambition—whether you are an employer, manufacturer, brand, supplier, technology partner, academic institution, policymaker or investor—we invite you to join us. Together, we can build the partnerships, evidence and infrastructure needed to transform today’s workwear into tomorrow’s circular economy.

Royal London Asset Management commissioned MTArt Artist Stefania Tejada a bespoke hoarding artwork for the Mayfair Quarter, creating a piece to adorn the building site at 111–117 New Bond Street, reflecting their new branding.

Measuring 16 metres in height and 60 metres in length, the large-scale canvas, titled ‘Expressions of the Universe: A Dialogue on Heritage and Spirituality’, pays tribute to the diverse cultural forces that have shaped London’s identity through faith, artistry, and shared global heritage.

The artwork is treated with a Clean Air photocatalytic coating, which helps reduce air pollution by breaking down harmful NOx particles, contributing to a cleaner and healthier urban environment.

Commit

MTArt Agency has signed the pledge to display that beyond showcasing and raising awareness of sustainability, public art and artistic practice is capable of being sustainable in and of itself.

Plan

MTArt Agency works with artists to ensure the topic of depicting and enacting change and sustainability, in order to leverage resources and populations, remains central to our practice. In this case study, Clean Air was brought in during initial planning stages to ensure that the entire production process and final output was sustainable.

Partner

Here at MTArt Agency, we worked with our external partners at Royal London Asset Management (RLAM) to ensure not only a visually strong creative outcome and storytelling that are consistent with their new branding, but also to reflect this visual commitment to sustainability in the nature of the material. 

In the creation of this artwork, we worked with Clean Air to coat the work in a photocatalytic coating, reducing air pollution by breaking down harmful NOx particles, which is especially pertinent in the busy New Bond Street area. Consequently, this project educates our partners at RLAM, and broader audiences, how to make commissioning as sustainable as possible, whilst also having a strong visual impact.

Act

As a registered B Corp, we at MTArt implemented our plan of showcasing environmentally beneficial approaches to art-making by centralising B Lab standards through our development process, in particular the Climate Action standards. 

By working with Clean Air, as a UK based Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) company, we were also able to enact responsible approaches to carbon footprint regulation, while supporting domestic organisations.

Share

MTArt Agency shares news of completed projects across social media channels to raise awareness of our practice and showcasesustainability. 

After the completion of the project, MTArt Agency has worked with UCL to survey localised respondents who live and work in the surrounding area for the public art piece, the results of which will be published with UCL.

RMF was appointed to deliver approximately 18,000m² of raised access flooring for Canada Water A2, a flagship commercial building within British Land’s landmark Canada Water regeneration project. Working across six floors, the project required a high-performance flooring solution that could support a plenum air distribution system while meeting demanding sustainability, quality and programme requirements.

By combining its sustainable RMF Eco Range flooring system with rigorous testing, BIM coordination and close collaboration across the project team, RMF successfully delivered a technically complex installation that met all specified performance standards and contributed to the wider environmental ambitions of the development.

Commit

RMF committed to circularity in practice at it’s inception as we are a business that truly lives and breathes circularity.

Plan

Canada Water A2 forms part of one of the UK’s largest urban regeneration projects, creating modern workspace within a vibrant mixed-use destination in South East London.

From the outset, the flooring package presented several challenges. The raised access floor would form an integral part of the building’s plenum air distribution strategy, making airtightness and installation quality critical to overall building performance.

Key project requirements included:

• Installation of approximately 18,000m² of raised access flooring.
• Delivery across six floors, from Ground Floor to Level 5.
• Integration with complex building services and ductwork.
• Compliance with stringent air leakage performance criteria.
• Alignment with the project’s sustainability objectives.
• Maintaining programme certainty and quality standards throughout construction.

A detailed planning and coordination process was undertaken to ensure the flooring system could be installed efficiently while supporting the building’s operational and environmental goals.

Partner

Successful delivery relied on close collaboration between RMF, the main contractor and the wider project team.

RMF supported the project through:

• BIM modelling and design coordination.
• Early engagement with mechanical and electrical contractors.
• Detailed planning around service penetrations and ductwork interfaces.
• Coordination of floor grille locations and specialist flooring requirements.
• Ongoing quality assurance and testing programmes.

Working collaboratively throughout the project helped minimise installation risks, maintain programme milestones and ensure all interfaces were fully coordinated before installation commenced.

Act

RMF supplied and installed its sustainable Eco Range raised access flooring system throughout the building.

The scope of works included:

• Supply and installation of approximately 18,000m² of RMF Eco Range flooring.
• Bridging systems to accommodate building services and ductwork.
• Installation of plenum barriers.
• Floor grille cut-outs and service integration.
• GIFA flooring installations within lobby areas.
• Plenum air leakage testing.
• T42 pedestal adhesion testing.

Particular attention was given to installation quality due to the floor’s role within the building’s ventilation strategy. Comprehensive testing was undertaken to verify performance and ensure compliance with all project specifications.

Share

The Canada Water A2 project demonstrates how sustainable flooring solutions can be successfully integrated into large-scale commercial developments without compromising performance.

Project outcomes included:

18,000m² Successfully Delivered

A major raised access flooring installation completed across six floors within a high-profile commercial development.

Verified Performance

Independent testing confirmed that the flooring installation met the project’s air leakage requirements, supporting the effectiveness of the plenum air distribution system.

Sustainability in Action

The use of RMF’s Eco Range flooring supported the project’s environmental objectives while demonstrating the practical application of circular economy principles within commercial construction.

Recognised Excellence

RMF’s commitment to quality, safety and site collaboration was recognised through a Supervisor of the Month award during the construction programme.

The successful completion of Canada Water A2 reinforces RMF’s capability to deliver complex, technically demanding flooring projects while supporting clients’ performance, sustainability and programme objectives.