Every clothing business has a carbon, a water, a chemical, a waste and a land use impact and an effect on the people who work for them. These impacts aren’t just about manufacturing. It starts when the bamboo is grown and continues right through to the moment the clothes are recycled. 

What Is Impact Positive?

We’ve measured our total impact in these six areas throughout our supply chain, so that where we have a negative impact we can work out how to reduce it.

We’re starting by offsetting our carbon and water footprints. This means that we’ll have compensated for our negative impact in these two areas. But our goal is that in all six areas BAM will have a positive impact. We want to be Impact Positive.

To achieve this, our challenge is to reduce all our negative impacts to zero in ten years. At this point we won’t need to offset, because we’ll have created no negative impact in the first place.

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.

This kind of fundamental change is uncharted territory so we’re taking advice from the best. We’re working collaboratively – with our suppliers and our customers – until NO aspect of making BAM clothes negatively impacts our environment. This report sets out how we plan to make BAM Impact Positive with goals for each of our six impacts.

Measuring our impact

We knew if we were going to reduce all our impacts – climate, waste, water, chemical, human and land use – to zero we needed to be able to measure every impact – not just of our business or that of our suppliers but right the way back through our supply chain to our growers. 

That’s why in the past two years we’ve traced our suppliers’ suppliers’ suppliers’ suppliers’ supplier.

By systematically identifying our growers, factories, plants and manufacturers, our goal is that within the year we can tell you exactly who created your clothes – right back to the forest where the bamboo was harvested.