ProService & Reusable TextilesProtective Textiles

Built Into the Fibre or Applied to the Cloth: What Protection Costs Over a Life

Two clocks run and the shorter one ends the garment. When the finish fails first, sixty-two per cent of the cloth goes into the bin with it.

The Cloth and the Service

How long the fabric lasts and how hard it is used

Industrial launderings before the fabric itself is unserviceable, whatever the finish is doing

Twice a week on industrial workwear; far fewer on an occasional-use garment

Used only to value the cloth retired early - the rest is make-up and trims, which are consumed either way

The Routes to the Property

One row per way of getting the protection. For a property spun into the fibre, enter the life of the cloth as the protection life - it does not fail separately. For an applied finish, enter the wash at which it drops below the standard, which is what a durability test gives you and what the free add-on durability calculator on this site returns. Renewal is re-treatment in the laundry: enter what it costs and how many times the fabric will take it before the hand or the shade will not bear another.

RouteGarment Costs costProtection Lasts washesRe-Treatment Costs costRe-Treatments the Cloth Will Take no.Garment Lives washesRe-Treatments Bought no.Total Over the Life costPer Protected Wash costPer Garment, a Year costCloth Life Unused washesWhich Is %Cloth Thrown Away costCheapest Protection 1/0Bought Today 1/0Priceable 1/0Row actions
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Add line opens a form. Cells in the sheet stay directly editable.

How to read this sheet

The two lives are the whole tool and they come from different places. The life of the cloth is a wear figure the laundry already has - garments are retired for thinning, tearing and shade long before anybody tests them - and the life of the finish is a durability curve, which the free flame retardant add-on calculator on this site will give you from an initial loading and a loss per wash. Put both in and the answer falls out. Where they are close, the route hardly matters; where they are far apart, the cheap garment is throwing away most of what was paid for it. Re-treatment is the option most often missed, and it is missed because it sits in the laundry contract rather than in the purchase order. A finish renewed twice carries a cheap garment through the full life of its cloth at a fraction of the inherent route, and the constraint is not cost but how many times the fabric will take it before the hand, the shade or the tensile will not bear another - which is a question for the finisher and not for the buyer. Enter that limit honestly, because a renewal too many is a garment that fails a test in service. Read the per-protected-wash column and nothing else when comparing. A purchase order shows the price of a garment, an annual budget shows garments bought, and neither shows protection delivered; the whole error this sheet corrects lives in the gap between them. What is not modelled. Protection is treated as present until the wash it fails at and absent after, which is a step where the truth is a decay - the free durability calculator gives the curve and the wash it crosses the standard, and that crossing is what belongs in this column. Nothing here prices the risk of a garment worn past its protection, which in flame retardancy is not a cost but an injury, and it is the argument for renewing early rather than exactly. Comfort, weight and hand differ between routes and are not costed, though on an inherent aramid against a treated cotton they are the reason operators comply or do not. And the fabric share is a single average across routes when an inherent garment carries a much higher one.

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