Discarded police uniforms turned into acoustic panels

Mid- and West Jutland Police are repurposing old, stained, and damaged uniforms instead of sending them for destruction, reports Danish broadcaster DR.

Shirts and dark blue uniforms are now being transformed into light blue and navy acoustic panels, according to Torben Ladefoged, police commissioner and head of logistics. If uniforms can be cleaned and reused, they are. If not, they are sent to a company that shreds them into fibers and turns them into sound-absorbing panels.

“Concretely, we get one panel in a navy blue police color with our logo, and one in a light blue shade resembling our shirts. They are 100 percent made from recycled police uniforms,” Ladefoged said. The police receive the panels back and use them to improve room acoustics when needed.

“There’s a good story in the fact that it’s our own clothing hanging on the wall, now as an acoustic panel,” he added.

Mid- and West Jutland Police, alongside North Zealand Police, were selected by the National Police to participate in a pilot project launched in November 2025, running until 2027. The initiative tests ways to extend the lifecycle of discarded uniforms rather than destroying them.

In just six months, the district has collected two tons of police uniforms, which are either cleaned and reused or recycled into acoustic panels.