UniFirst Receives Awards for Helping to Keep Environment 'Green'

Long recognized for providing attractive uniform services and keeping workwear clean, UniFirst Corporation is now being saluted by many cities and towns for the laundering processes it has in place that help keep local environments appealing and similarly spotless.

UniFirst, for example, has received a top "Gold" award for "outstanding achievement" in water safety by the Missouri Water Environment Association, an organization dedicated to improving the quality of water resources throughout the "Show Me" state.

But with 167 customer servicing facilities serving more than 200,000 customers throughout North America, the UniFirst environmental accolades have not stopped there.

In Austin, Texas, the Water & Wastewater Utility Special Service Division has presented UniFirst with its "Excellence in Pretreatment" award for maintaining "a properly designed, operated and maintained pretreatment system" that continually passes unannounced sampling inspections with flying colors. Deeper in the heart of Texas, Houston's Industrial Wastewater Service has given UniFirst similar kudos by awarding the company one of its coveted Gold Awards for enviro-friendly water treatment processes.

Outside the Lone Star state, UniFirst has received another half-dozen similar "green" awards from the Hampton Roads Sanitation District in Virginia, the Kansas Water Environment Association in Topeka, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities in North Carolina.

UniFirst has even won praise for its environmental sensitivity within the specialized field of laundering and decontaminating apparel worn by nuclear power employees. Exelon Corporation, one of the nation's largest nuclear power providers, has presented UniFirst with its Environmental Leadership Award for its "lengthy record of… (processes and) services that are environmentally responsible, safe and of superior quality."

Meanwhile, as a member of the Laundry Environment Stewardship Program (LaundryESP®), UniFirst has contributed for more than 30 years to an industry-wide initiative aimed at the "greening" of the overall environment. Established in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, LaundryESP is credited with reducing overall industry pollutants by 40 percent, water usage by 13 percent, and energy usage by 12 percent.

In a recently published brochure, UniFirst notes that "being 'green' goes way beyond the color of our logo." Apparently so.