Who made your clothes?
You’ve fallen in love with a new piece of clothing – but who made it? Where? How?
Increasingly we all want to know more about how our clothing is made and that’s why BAM has created BAM DNA. We’ve been tracing our supply chain and measuring the impact of our clothes for years. Now we’re sharing it with you so you can see for yourself exactly how your clothes were made. And you can see how BAM are working to lower the impact of every item we sell.
Read the BAM DNA story behind every item
How can we tell you so much about your clothing’s DNA?
We’ll be honest, it’s taken years to map our supply chain followed by collaboration with Life Cycle Analysis experts to measure our impact. But sharing this knowledge is essential if the industry is to become more transparent.
01 - Mapping our supply chain
We’ve been tracing our supply chain for four years so we can find out exactly who is making your clothes. This means going right the way back to the source supplier or the bamboo forest. At each stage we have to ask each supplier to tell us their suppliers and slowly track everyone down. It’s time-consuming work.
02 - Life cycle impact measurement
Life Cycle Analysis experts Green Story have taken the detail from our supply chain mapping and use their sophisticated algorithm to measure the impact of every stage of making your clothes. They can then compare that to any other fabric. We can trust their results because they work to the ISO 14044 standard. To give you an idea of the complexity of this work they:
- Review the greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and blue water consumption in our supply chain.
- Assess the environmental footprint of 1kg product from crop/initial fibre to it reaching your hands
- Specifically review cultivation, fibre production, yarn production, knitting and weaving, dyeing and finishing, and cutting and sewing.
03 - Reducing our impact even more
We can see exactly how much better our clothing is for the planet than conventional alternatives. But more importantly we can see where we can cut our impact further – this information drives further reductions.
04 - Total transparency
Finally, we share this with you. Transparency is an essential part of reducing our impact because it lets you hold us to account and make sure we do exactly what we’ve said we would. And you can make informed choices about the clothes you wear – you can see the impact of every item of our clothing on our website.
So what else is new?
BAM DNA is just one of many new initiatives. Our goal is to be Impact Positive by 2030 and we’ve split that goal into the three areas we need to focus on most: Climate, Nature and People. Here you can find out about our development of circular ranges; our innovative next-generation fabrics; the research we’re funding and the technological leaps we’re planning to make.
People
Living wages and fair treatment for every person who makes our clothes, right back to the grower.
Nature
A fully circular range which conserves natural resources, protects biodiversity, eliminates harmful pollution and closes the loop at the end of use.
Climate
We are re-crafting our Climate story. Read our blog to find out more in the meantime.
