The Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA) is a non-profit international trade association representing the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Founded in 1912, the organization works to protect and promote the interests of companies that provide and maintain reusable textiles for a wide range of businesses. The TRSA provides a collective voice for its members, who supply clean, professionally laundered textiles to millions of customers daily. Its focus is on fostering a safer and more environmentally conscious community within the textile services sector.
Defining the Textile Rental Services Association
The Textile Rental Services Association serves an industry that provides essential services across the economy, encompassing the renting and maintenance of uniforms, linens, and facility supplies. This sector involves companies, known as operators, that own, launder, and deliver items such as hotel sheets, restaurant napkins, hospital scrubs, industrial uniforms, floor mats, and restroom supplies. The process involves a service loop of pickup, industrial laundering, maintenance, and delivery of reusable textiles. The U.S. market alone is valued at billions of dollars and employs over 150,000 people. This business model provides a cost-effective solution for businesses by eliminating the need to purchase and manage large inventories of textiles.
TRSA membership comprises textile services companies, ranging from local operators to large national and global firms. The association also includes supplier members, such as manufacturers of laundry equipment, chemicals, and the textiles themselves. The primary goal is to support these members as they serve the end-user market, ensuring high standards of quality, safety, and environmental stewardship are met across the supply chain.
Core Activities and Member Support
The TRSA’s operational role focuses on three distinct areas of support to ensure the health and growth of the textile services industry.
Government Advocacy
Government advocacy and regulatory representation is a primary function, where the association acts as the unified voice for the industry in legislative and regulatory settings. This includes lobbying efforts on issues related to environmental regulations, labor laws, and workplace safety standards. The TRSA works to shape policies that are conducive to industry growth.
Education and Training
The association places a strong emphasis on education and training programs for its members’ employees and management teams. It hosts conferences, summits, and webinars covering topics from operational efficiency and technological advancements to best practices in maintenance and quality control. These resources help companies improve their processes and maintain a competitive edge.
Networking and Information Exchange
Networking and information exchange represent another core activity, providing platforms for industry leaders to connect and share insights. The TRSA facilitates these connections through events and publications, disseminating research, benchmarking data, and operational guides. This collaborative environment encourages the adoption of industry-wide best practices and supports professional development.
Professional Certification and Industry Benchmarks
The TRSA develops and administers voluntary certification programs that allow textile services companies to demonstrate adherence to high standards of quality, hygiene, and sustainability. These benchmarks are designed to professionalize the industry and build confidence among business customers, particularly those in regulated sectors like healthcare and food service. The certifications provide a third-party, verifiable measure of a company’s commitment to excellence.
The Hygienically Clean certification validates the effectiveness of a laundry’s sanitizing processes through quantified biological testing. This process requires laundries to pass bacteriological tests, ensuring textiles meet a minimum performance specification of less than or equal to 20 colony forming units (CFU) of bacteria per textile item. This standard aligns with the United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) 61 protocol. Specialized designations, such as Hygienically Clean Healthcare and Hygienically Clean Food Service, impose additional scrutiny to meet the stringent requirements of those sectors.
The Clean Green certification focuses on environmental stewardship by defining sustainable laundry best management practices. To earn this designation, laundries must meet specific standards for water and energy consumption, such as a water usage threshold of 2.6 gallons per pound of laundered goods. They must also implement practices for reusing, reclaiming, and recycling resources. The criteria align with the ASTM International standard, Guide for Sustainable Laundry Practices, providing an internationally recognized indicator of sustainability in commercial laundry operations.