Using work clothing sustainably

Worth the money: recycling of clothing at Swiss Post

Whether it's the postal carrier's raincoat, the PostBus driver's trousers or the logistics technician's pullover: with approximately 20 tonnes or 60,000 items of clothing collected, employees turned the campaign “A second lease of life for Swiss Post clothes”, launched in 2015, into a big success in just a few months. PostEurop acknowledged this commitment in 2015 with the “Coup de Cœur” award.

Swiss Post recycles the used work clothes together with the Swiss Red Cross in the Bern-Mittelland district. The clothes are sorted according to their condition. To protect trademarks, the Swiss Post label is removed. Items in mint condition are sold by the Red Cross at its “La Trouvaille” second-hand warehouses for 2 to 15 francs. Very good quality clothes with small defects go to organizations including Swiss Mountain Aid, and are donated to the families of mountain farmers. Badly worn or defective clothing is transformed into industrial materials such as cleaning cloths or insulation. All proceeds from the sales go towards social projects in Switzerland. The campaign will be repeated in 2016.

More than 3,600 pairs of shoes collected

The campaign “A second lease of life for shoes”, launched in 2014, also exceeded all expectations in 2015: employees in Delivery and Acceptance & Sorting collected a total of more than 3,600 pairs of used work and casual shoes for the Swiss Red Cross in the Bern-Mittelland district, which sold the shoes at its “La Trouvaille” second-hand warehouses or donated them to farming families in need. Around 40 percent of the shoes went abroad, where they were patched up to be worn again.