What Is Impact Positive?
Because we work with bamboo and organic cotton and because they are sustainable materials, BAM as a company already has strong sustainability credentials. But we have to look beyond our own boundaries at our wider impact, at our supply chain, at what happens to our clothes after you’ve bought them.
Impact positive means finding a way to be truly regenerative, not depleting the earth’s resources and not burying waste. For this, we need to rethink every process in our supply chain. We need to rethink how we make clothes so that they are designed to be circular. If we don’t know how we’ll dispose of it, we shouldn’t make it.
We knew when we set the goal that some of the techniques, technology and infrastructure needed to achieve it didn’t exist yet. That’s why we’re involved in projects to explore and develop new techniques. It’s the only way we’ll get there.
If ‘going green’ is hiking to the top of a hill, Impact Positive is scaling Everest. But it’s where every business needs to be headed.
Measuring our impact
Our impact positive goal is broken down into our main impacts – climate, waste, water, chemical, human and land use – with a goal for each.
We’ve traced right through our supply chain to identify our suppliers’ suppliers’ suppliers’ suppliers’ supplier. This has allowed us to measure our impact from raw material all the way to customers washing our products and work out how to reduce it.
To get into more detail, read our annual report covering last year's impacts and achievements, our immediate plans and ultimate goals.
WE REMOVED CONVENTIONAL PLASTIC FROM ALL OUR PACKAGING
We have systematically addressed all plastic in our packaging finally removing the last bit of conventional plastic in autumn 2020.
- Our socks, underwear and accessories are packed in card or paper packaging.
- Our socks are now secured with a stitch so we no longer need one-use disposable mini plastic hangers.
- We use two types of compostable garment bag. Home compostable bags break down in a home/ garden compost. Our industrially compostable bags need to go to local authority recycling. These bags are a huge improvement on plastic but this an area that needs much more development in technology and infrastructure to create a truly sustainable solution.
Tell me more: Compostable bags
- Our parcel bags are paper.
- Our swing tags are made from recycled paper cord and a re-usable metal safety pin.
We say we’ve removed all conventional plastic because our industrially compostable bags still technically contain a type of plastic, although it breaks down much faster than conventional plastic. This is the best solution given the systems currently in place. When a better solution is available, we’ll use it.
Pulp Production
The next step is turning the harvested bamboo into dried pulp which will then be sold onto the fibre producers. Very little is understood in the wider clothing industry about the processes involved this deep into the supply chain.
The factory Merryn visited shares our environmental values, having invested heavily in waste-treatment technology. We now have the knowledge and transparency we need to make our impact positive ambition both possible and really meaningful.