What does Social Value look like when a business accepts that waste can’t be avoided, but refuses to let it become meaningless?
MiHub Global - the uniform solutions company clothing over five million people worldwide - shows that Social Value and biodiversity don't have to be afterthoughts.
In a business that works with garments, packaging, logistics and physical sites, waste is part of the operating context; the more interesting question is: what could they do with their waste? MiHub’s answer was to look more closely at the places around their own workplaces and find ways to make environmental activity support local partnerships, staff wellbeing, volunteering, and community benefit.
Generating £8.5 million in Social Value over the year, with results externally validated using the Social Value TOM System™. They have donated £170,694 to VCFSEs (Voluntary, Community, Faith, and Social Enterprises), 507 volunteering hours, and more than 3,500 items donated to charity. What makes these figures meaningful is the activity underneath them.
One of the clearest examples sits just outside MiHub’s head office.
Social Value right outside the office
Last summer, MiHub turned its attention to the environment immediately around its head office. Instead of treating biodiversity as something disconnected from daily operations, they began with the space closest to its people, around their Castle Donington office. The result was a planting project thinking about place, waste, wellbeing and local partnership cohesively.
Working with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, they developed a biodiversity garden planted entirely with local and native species, creating a space that benefits both the surrounding habitat and the people visiting every day. Contributing to well-being, employees continue to tend the garden, keeping the project alive well beyond its launch. They also had to contend with the local rabbit population, whose enthusiasm for the plants has required creative and ongoing protective measures. Rather than a one-off intervention, the garden is now part of the everyday environment around the office.
It was not only a great place for nature, but also a welcoming space for our people. Reflecting the company’s commitment to environmental responsibility.
Lisa Kinch, ESG and Risk Administrator at MiHub Global
Circularity that people can see
Partnering with Yellow Octopus, an innovation circular solutions provider, MiHib was able to give garments a new lease of life. Using 75% garments and 25% plant-based binding agent, these excess ingredients created items including a large office table, Uniform Hero awards and bee houses. In the context of the biodiversity project, bee houses are especially effective because they turn waste into something rooted in place that supports biodiversity. Rather than disappearing into a waste stream, materials reappear as part of the environment itself.
The same is true for the benches installed in the garden space, including recycled plastic benches by Circular 11, which staff use as part of the outdoor space - combining biodiversity improvements with reused materials and employee wellbeing in one sitting.
The two benches use cutting-edge technology to incorporate inseparable plastic waste, saving over 100kg of material from being incinerated. Equivalent to 50,000 bottle tops.
Ben Gibbons, Founder of Circular 11
Why this is Social Value, not just environmental activity
When businesses discuss environmental progress, the emphasis often falls on reduction - the aim to cut waste, reduce emissions, or minimise harm. Those goals are significant, and MiHub’s project provides substantial progress, including work on carbon reduction, renewable electricity and packaging. Yet one of the most interesting aspects of this case is what happens when environmental action creates wider social outcomes.
The same circularity that defined the garden project can also be seen in MiHub’s other partnerships - donating more than 500 pieces of clothing to Emmanuel House, which supports people experiencing homelessness in Nottingham, and working with Phoenix Resource Centre, where obsolete fabric has been turned into items such as aprons for hospital staff and bags for patients. Materials that could have been treated as landfill are instead redirected into forms of community value.
A model for radical collaboration
What stands out in MiHub Global’s approach isn’t the plethora of initiatives underway - it's the way different forms of value are connected. Local partnerships become part of how Mi Hub operates - not an add-on to the core business, but woven into procurement decisions, material flows, and the spaces where their people work every day. The result is a stronger kind of impact: designed for people, place and environment simultaneously.
For organisations looking to strengthen their own Social Value approach, this may be the most important takeaway. The best Social Value stories are rarely the ones with the longest list of activities done in isolation. They are the ones where one practical decision creates value in several directions at once.
As a global uniform solutions business, MiHub manufactures, sources, and distributes workwear across complex international supply chains. Their Social Value activities are built into standard ways of working - but those ways of working aren't always easy to see.
By building outward through local partnerships, circular material flows, and place-based action, MiHub shows how environmental work can do more than target net zero. It can leave something behind.
Learn how to deliver Social Value
More and more organisations are moving from commitments to long-term, place-based impact. Check out more Social Value case studies and insights to find out how you can make a difference.
Want to go further? Social Value Portal can help you design, improve and measure your Social Value. Speak to one of our experts today
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