Reducing materials usage and minimising the impact of the materials that we consume is a very high priority for us. In 2019, we adopted the European Union’s Waste Framework Directive as our basis for waste management and the resulting waste catalogue contains 35 different waste categories that cover all material items present in a Coats unit. This gives increased transparency and understanding of waste generation streams across our business, and assists us in identification of opportunities for reduction, and where possible, prevention.

Our strategy for reducing overall waste, is to prioritise reduction in its generation through process and product redesign, followed by implementation of reuse and recycling initiatives. We are committed to increase the degree of circularity at Coats, evolving our manufacturing processes, material flows and products from a linear (take, make, discard) to a circular (reduce, reuse, recycle) model.

During 2022, the total waste generated across Coats business units was 14.6 thousand tonnes, compared with 22.5 thousand tonnes in 2021. Analysis of waste generated in 2022 shows that 19% of waste material from our operations is linked directly to our products, with other high volume categories including paper, cardboard and wood packaging 18%, sludge 27% and plastic packaging 10%. Of our waste generated, 62% was recycled or reused, with 13% disposed of in landfill (this is down from 14% in 2021 and 19% in 2020). Globally, 58% of our units have achieved sending zero waste to landfill through 2022.

As per our 2019 to 2022 sustainability strategy, our target for waste reduction in 2022 was delivery of a 25% reduction in the percentage of waste generated from our 2018 baseline. Against this target, we are exceptionally proud to have fully achieved this target with a full 25% reduction delivered – a significant improvement from the 1.4% reduction reported for 2021.

Considerable progress was made throughout the year in working collaboratively with our supply chain partners to identify and implement new waste reduction and circularity initiatives. Examples of circularity on packaging materials have entailed us working closely with strategic suppliers where uplift programs have been instituted on our paper and cardboard waste, enabling it to be repulped and reconstituted into new paper and cardboard packaging materials. With plastic, many of our units now grind thermoplastic dye centres and customer returned thread supports into plastic chips and return these to suppliers enabling their melting and reformation into new plastic items. We have implemented tripartite service agreements with our primary chemical suppliers and a network of global specialist collection players, enabling recovery of empty chemicals drums and plastic intermediary bulk containers and redistribution to our suppliers for their reuse.

In our recently acquired footwear components business, structural components made from thermoplastic or cellulosic materials are supplied to the customer in a ‘sheet’ from which customers cut out parts which undergo secondary processing. This creates up to 20% waste, which is taken back by Coats to remelt/recycle.

Significant progress has also been made in reducing the packaging we supply with our products when shipped to customers. We have strategically eliminated use of plastic sleeves across black and dark coloured thread cones , resulting in elimination of 14.2 million plastic sleeves from our value chain, and have advanced the use of recycled plastic in cones and vicones, increasing recycled plastic use by 36% in 2022.

In 2022, further focus has been given to selection and optimised use of chemistry for physical/chemical effluent treatment systems, resulting in enhanced efficacy in coagulation and flocculation, resulting in reduced generation of sludge. Good progress has also been made in weight reduction of sludge through optimisation of filter-press operation and enhanced sludge drying, resulting in more effective water extraction.

In our next strategy period from 2023 until 2026, our primary focus for materials waste will be elimination of waste to landfill across all units globally. Our target for 2026 is delivery of zero waste to landfill, and this will be achieved by higher granularity analysis of waste streams which today continue to be diverted to landfill, with improved segregation and identification of opportunities for circularity, recycling and reuse.

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Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals

We signed up to the ZDHC programme in 2016 and committed to aligning our effluent standards with those of the programme in 2018. We adopted the ZDHC conventional parameters with foundational limits as our Coats internal standards in 2019.

Initially these limits were applied only to effluent discharged from the factory, but in 2019 the scope was expanded to include sludge. Sludge is essentially the solid residue created during the effluent treatment process, during which some chemicals are precipitated out of the effluent in order to clean it. While some contaminants in effluent can be destroyed through the treatment process, in other cases this is not possible as the chemical remains either in the effluent or in the sludge. Historically much effluent treatment technology has been aimed at removing chemicals that were unwanted in the effluent precisely by ensuring that they ended up in the sludge, however focus on analysis of effluent and sludge, means that for these durable chemicals the only option is to prevent them being used in processing in the first place. We are wholly supportive of this approach and continue to work closely with our key dye and chemical suppliers (many of whom are ZDHC affiliates themselves), to work out how to continue to reduce the chemical load needed to successfully process the fibres that we work with.

Our goal is to have all of our units meeting the ZDHC standards, and in 2022, 92% of our effluent and sludge in those countries where testing is possible was compliant with the ZDHC standard, up from 82% in 2021. Due to our strategic restructuring programme in the Americas and Mexico, we have seen significant changes in our manufacturing product range and mix in 2022 in Mexico, and this has driven a change in the composition of dyeing auxiliary chemicals in our Mexican Orizaba site, resulting in a small number of ZDHC parameters being marginally out of specification. Our leadership team in Mexico are actively addressing this situation through a comprehensive deep-dive of utilised chemistry as well as review of all effluent treatment plant sub-processes. We are confident that we will be able to progress to 100% compliance in 2023, and such is the importance of the ZDHC focus, we will continue to target 100% compliance through our 2023 to 2026 strategy period.

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