Who Makes Your Clothes

Our people goal is simple, living wages and fair treatment for all, from the forest all the way to your when you get your amazing climate friendly BAM-soft product in the post. If we want to understand and reduce our impact on nature and climate too, we need to know everyone who is involved in making our clothes.

It’s long and complex, but possible to identify our suppliers. We’re going great guns on our goal of 100% traceability for all tiers right back to the forest by 2025. We’re already at 86% and would’ve been further if it wasn’t for the global pandemic. Like many brands we already have strong working relationships with our garment manufacturers.

We have visited one of the sustainably managed bamboo forests in China's Chonging province. The naturally occurring forests contain steep slopes which bamboo can comfortably grow on, maximising an otherwise unusable area.

Because only the mature culms of the plant are harvested, the root systems remain in the ground. All the carbon is stored in and the biodiversity in the soli is protected. 

Small sections are harvested at a time, which rapidly renew much faster than hardwood trees due to bamboo being an extremely fast growing grass.

In 2021, we commissioned a study with biodiversity experts
Nature Positive to look at the impacts that bamboo viscose
production could have on biodiversity in China. We’re using the
findings of this report to create a bespoke bamboo standard
for BAM to recognise the best practices of bamboo growers.
Having a rigorous mechanism in place will guarantee us the
highest levels of sustainability and ultimately measure the
positive impact our use of bamboo has on nature.

The harvested bamboo is turned into dried pulp and then sold onto the fibre producers. How do we ensure the production of our bamboo viscose is safe?

It’s all about building relationships. By tracing back through our supply chain, we identified the yarn mills that our garment manufacturers were buying from and then identified who was supplying those mills with viscose.

Our two viscose producers are industry giants, Sanyou and Jilin. We visited them in 2019 and established that they were also both committed to improving their equipment and processes to reduce their environmental impacts. Three years on these viscose producers are rated as 4th and 7th in the world in the Canopy Hot Button report which ranks viscose producers according to their environmental performance and commitments to protecting the worlds ancient & endangered forests.

Both of them hold Oekotex step level 3 certification, one of the most rigorous industry audits assessing the use of chemicals, environmental and social impact, and quality management performance. The EU BAT (Best Available Techniques) specifically relates to viscose production and is currently internationally recognised as the most rigorous and responsible standard. Sanyou have already been verified. Jilin have been assessed and are close to securing verification in 2022. Both producers have invested millions of dollars in technology and infrastructure to achieve these levels and they continue to work towards safest and most responsible production techniques.

Once the fibres are ready, they are sold onto yarn & fabric producers. Fibres are often blended (like bamboo viscose and organic cotton) and spun into yarn, then yarn is knitted or woven into fabric which is then dyed and finished, ready to be made into garments. Sometimes, these processes all happen at one very large factory (this is called vertical manufacturing) and sometimes there are several different companies / factories involved. Brands rarely have a direct purchasing relationship with these suppliers which can make it quite challenging to map supply chains, but this is absolutely crucial if we are going to be able to measure and reduce our impact because a large portion of a garment's impact comes from these stages.

We have now mapped over 70% of our yarn mills, fabric mills and dye-houses. We are friend of the ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals) Foundation, an industry-led organisation works with brands, suppliers, mills and chemical producers to support better chemical management, lower emissions and safer chemistry. As friends of the foundation we are able to make the guidelines, platforms and solutions they have developed available to all suppliers, even ones we don't have a direct relationship with. This will result in better measurement, better governance and the means to reduce chemical pollution.