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35 Years of TEXAID – a Success Story
With the founding of TEXAID in 1978, the six aid organizations Swiss Red Cross, Caritas Switzerland, Winter Aid Switzerland, Solidar Suisse, HEKS, and Kolping Switzerland created a unique business model – the partnership between non-profit organizations and a private entrepreneur. Successfully, asTEXAID generated more than 100 million francs for its affiliated aid organizations and many local charities over the last 35 years.
The following factors were pivotal for the decision of Swiss aid organizations, traditionally involved in the collection of used clothes, to bring their own collection and recycling organization into being in 1978: the amount of collected goods exceeded the quantity needed for immediate aid by far, the utilization was meant to be put into controllable hands, the intention was to create as much jobs as possible, and the biggest possible portion of the proceeds was meant to benefit the humanitarian projects of the aid organizations. As collecting, sorting and selling of used clothes are not exactly within the area of expertise of aid organizations, they were looking for a partner with the necessary know-how. They found him in Heinz Knecht, a German with experience in textile recycling and a long affinity to Switzerland. The entrepreneur was responsible for the build-up, operations and the training of employees, and he also participated in financing the realization of the sorting plant in Schattdorf/UR. Due to his huge commitment, Heinz Knecht was granted half of the shares of the newly founded TEXAID Textilverwertungs-AG. A partnership of non-profit organizations and a private contractor in this form and in this industry is unparalleled in Europe to this day.
Professionalism that pays off
TEXAID has been successfully meeting the requirements of the aid organizations for more than 35 years. Today, the company provides 150 contractually-guaranteed and socially secure jobs, more than 100 of them for employees without vocational training. TEXAID passes on over 90 percent of the generated proceeds to the affiliated aid organizations, Samaritan Societies, Kolping Families, and many local non-profit institutions every year. Since 2004, Martin Böschen, grandson of co-founder Heinz Knecht, controls the fate of TEXAID. He has adopted the core values of the aid organizations and his grandfather and has combined them with ecological and economic progress. For example, sorting plants and cleaning rag productions in Bulgaria (2005) and Hungary (2008) have been added. Since 2009, TEXAID is also collecting in Germany, where in August 2013 they took over Resales, Germany's third largest textile recycling company with two modern sorting plants and 29 own second-hand shops. Since 2011, the Swiss collection organization Contex AG is also part of the TEXAID group, with affiliated aid organizations like Terre des Hommes, the Swiss library for the blind, visually impaired and dyslexic people (SBS) and many regionally active charitable institutions. The world's most modern sorting plant in Schattdorf/UR, built in 2008, processes 6,000 tonnes of used textiles per year and eliminates remaining foreign matters and waste, before the goods are sent to own and foreign sorting facilities. For the most part the collected wares from all over Switzerland reach the plant eco-friendly by train.
95 percent recyclable
The annual collection volume in Switzerland amounts to 35,000 tonnes (equaling roughly 160 million separate pieces), in total, TEXAID collects 76,000 tonnes of used textiles. Two-thirds thereof are processed in own sorting and production plants. Thanks to the meticulous sorting, 65 percent are still wearable clothes, which find new owners in economically weak countries. About 30 percent are recycled materials (cleaning rags, recycled wool and insulating materials) and only about 5 percent are foreign materials and torn or dirty textiles, which have to be disposed of via waste incineration.