Biodegradable Glove

Construction sites procure vast amounts of work gloves. This can lead to large amounts of landfill waste. Until very recently, all work gloves in the industry were non-biodegradable; taking hundreds or thousands of years to decompose when sent to landfill. The lack of a biodegradable glove on the market gave C360 procurement and environment teams no opportunity to further improve environmental credentials through green glove procurement. Extrapolated across all CRL (and Costain, Skanska and JV) projects, this significantly damages environmental credentials and performance.

However just recently the world’s first fully biodegradable synthetic work glove has emerged on the market and we believe this represents an environmental opportunity that meets safety/performance standards and could become cost-effective. Our initial price scoping shows the glove currently costs £4.95/pair.

The Showa 4552 biodegradable, multi-purpose, sponge nitrile grip glove uses Globus’ Eco Best Technology® (EBT) to ensure full biodegradability; typically within 24 months. In landfill, the glove material becomes attractive to microbial action as a result of the EBT formulation and so breaks down.