Reusable Against Disposable: What a Textile Costs per Use

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A garment survives a cycle with probability one minus its attrition, so the uses it delivers are the sum of that survival curve over the rated life - a geometric series converging on one over the attrition rate. That limit is a ceiling the rating cannot lift, and it is the whole finding: at seven per cent a garment averages fourteen uses whether it is rated for seventy-five washes or three hundred. Two consequences follow. Paying for durability is worth a great deal at low attrition and nothing at high attrition, so the specification argument and the linen-room argument are different arguments and only one of them is usually worth having. And a rated-life comparison does not merely flatter the reusable case, it can invert it: an item can be credited with a large saving while actually losing money, which is what the seeded scrub suit does. Lost and condemned are the inputs that decide every row and the ones nobody measures. Take them from a stock reconciliation over several months, not from an estimate, and separate them - they respond to completely different remedies, one to control of issue and return and the other to wash process and inspection standards. Not modelled: the sterility assurance and barrier performance that decide whether a reusable is permissible at all, which is a regulatory question and not an economic one; the environmental comparison, where water and energy on one side meet waste volume on the other and the ranking depends entirely on the boundary drawn; laundry contract minimums and the step costs of adding capacity; and the possibility that raising attrition is itself a decision, since tighter control of issue costs money and buys uses.