When I was growing up, my parents didn’t allow us to say “I can’t”. Instead, we had to say “I’ll try”. These days, it’s not a strict rule I hold for myself, but it has become an attitude my siblings and I have, for better or worse, applied to most aspects of our lives. When I was a junior at Dartmouth, my siblings and I had the idea to start a bamboo clothing company. We had experience in the apparel industry through our first company, Five Ultimate, and we wanted to take that experience and try to do something good for the world. A sustainable clothing company felt like a good idea to explore.
We did some initial research, and but didn’t find much. No reliable information was out there about the environmental impacts of bamboo textiles. You could read lots about how sustainably bamboo can be grown, about the benefits of the fabric itself, but every resource we found left one crucial part of the story out: the fiber processing.
We realized that we needed to do this research ourselves if we were going to get the real answer. So, I decided I’d try.
While in China, I visited a yarn spinning factory, a dyeing factory and two cut and sew factories. It was exciting and fun to see each process for myself, but I remained irked about bamboo fabric as a truly sustainably produced textile. I still couldn’t get reliable information about how the bamboo stalk was turned into fiber.
I didn’t really understand what the process was until I got back to the states, spent a lot of hours in the library, and learned that the process everyone was using to make bamboo textiles, the viscose process, really wasn’t all that environmentally friendly.
The viscose process uses two harmful chemicals. It was disheartening—textile companies were being green-washed by fiber companies, and in turn green-washing the American public into believing that the bamboo fabric made through the viscose process was environmentally friendly.
In my research, I learned that there was a promising alternative to the viscose process: the lyocell process. At the time, I wasn’t able to find anyone making bamboo lyocell, so that was our next challenge and a new “I’ll try” story. But I’ll have to save that one for another time.
So far, I’ve only painted half of the picture. Many people try things and fail. My siblings and I haven’t achieved what we have simply because we’ve tried. We’ve tried hard, AND we’ve had the resources, the experience, and the skills to back up our efforts.
I’ve found that the trying portion of this process is what motivates me though. I wake up excited about work each morning because I’m trying new things, and because that is challenging.
An “I’ll try” attitude works for me. And hey, if you try it sometime it just might work for you.
