Product Sourcing 

Positive Impact makes every effort to use suppliers who have a strong environmental record. Each supplier has completed a questionnaire* regarding their product and the environmental practices of their business. Our range has been selected using ethical sourcing principles. We choose products that are Fairtrade Certified, have strong environmental credentials and where possible, we source Australian products to reduce emissions from travel. Our products help promote strong environmental messages and reduce consumption.

Positive Impact Supplier Product Questionnaire

Our vision is to provide “cradle to cradle” information on each of our products to you, our customers.  We encourage our suppliers to continually improve their systems, processes and consumption habits to reduce their environmental impact.

We urge them to consider the following:

• Manufacturing process
• Materials used
• Recycled content
• Recyclability
• LCA (Lifecycle Analysis)
• Working conditions (are they Fair Trade?)
• Corporate social responsibilty
• Commitment to the community

Suppliers Walking the Talk

One of our key suppliers has engaged Intertek Services for the assessment of ethical sourcing within its supply chain.  Intertek is a global leader in the area of monitoring Social Compliance, and has a global network of over 21,000 people in 110 countries around the world. 

Other suppliers have Corporate Social Responsibility and Community programmes and some have certifications for recycled content and other independent assessment of environmental practice.

The people who supply us with our recycled tyre products began trying to turn one plastic cup into a pencil. Why? Because it had never been done before and it would prove to the world that you could take one everyday, throwaway item that would usually just go straight to landfill and, instead, turn it into a new product which was fun, functional and had a long second life.

*It is important to note that Positive Impact has relied on our suppliers to provide this information with integrity and honesty.

Product Materials & Terminology

Bamboo
Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on earth and is renewable and versatile. It yields both durable timbers and soft feel fabrics. In China, many of the bamboo forests have been there for hundreds of years without any need to replant them as they naturally regenerate themselves with new shoots every year, even with regular harvesting of mature timber. 

Related Product: Bamboo Photo Frame

PET
PET is formally called polyethylene glycol terephthalate, is a type of line-type saturation polyester resin. The PET material is characterised with high transparency, good stretching and good isolation. It has become the mainstream packaging material for all kinds of food, drinks, edible oil, chemical products and medical products. It has almost replaced glass packaging in a number of industries.

Recycled PET is the reprocessing of waste PET bottles (such as Coca Cola plastic bottles) to produce recycled PET, filament, short fibre or RPET flake. These materials can be manufactured into various type of fabrics and plastic products.

Beeswax
Candles made from 100% beeswax have no toxic paraffin, no soy, no palm wax and no additives.  Paraffin is a toxic petrochemical by-product and in the US 95% of candles are made this way.  The other 5% of candles available are made up of soy and palm wax. When the natural materials are harvested for these candles oils are produced and the process creates millions of tonnes of dioxins – which are both toxic to humans and the environment.

Related Product: Beeswax Candle

A beeswax candle is a natural ioniser, purifying the air of dust, germs odours, pollen toxins and mildew. Our beeswax candles are hand poured and rolled . They won’t drip or smoke when burned in a draught free area.

Organic Certified Cotton
Pure natural cotton fibre, cultivated without chemicals or genetic modification and certified to prove it. The manufacturing impact for all apparel is high but buying certified organic is a positive step you can take to reduce pollution damage to the environment.

Related Product: Striped Polo Shirt

Fairtrade Certified Cotton
Two thirds of the worlds cotton is produced in developing countries by small-scale farmers. Fair trade Certification ensures they get fair and stable prices, and have the power to improve their livelihoods. We aim to work with as many Fair trade suppliers as we can.

Related Product: Key Ring Bag

Recycled Leather
An ingenious product born of post industrial thinking. Recycled leather is made by grinding up scraps of waste leather with a small amount of natural rubber. Durable, textural and viable.

Related Product: Recycled Leather Notepad

Solar Products
Australian sun is energising, why not use it to generate energy?  Solar products provide totally emission free energy – of course they do have a footprint in manufacture, however, long before the end of the products’ life it will have generated more solar energy than it used in manufacture. With solar energy development this will be even more effective in the future.

Related Product: Solar AM/FM Radio

Recycled
A recycled product has been passed through a series of treatments or changes to make it available for reuse. With diminishing natural resources recycling materials just make sense. The actual process of recycling a product also consumes much less energy and water that manufacturing it from scratch. We are even getting to the point where a material can be re-produced up to 3 times.

The Original range is a great example of what can be done by recycling products.  80,000 tonnes (that’s more than 5 jumbo jets full) of flexible plastic packaging is manufactured each year in Indonesia. The Original range uses this waste plastic packaging material  collected from residential areas of Jakarta and then cleans it to make products and provides sustainable employment to craftspeople of Indonesia.

Related Product: Original Carry Bag 

Related Product: Carbon Credit Voucher

BPA - Bisphenol A
A chemical found in numerous plastic consumer products such as water bottles and baby bottles. Bisphenol A (BPA) has been the subject of controversy in recent years. Research indicates that Low doses of bisphenol A can mimic the body's own hormones, possibly causing negative health effects such as miscarriage in women. There is concern that long term low dose exposure to bisphenol A may be toxic in humans.

Related Product: BPA Free Water Bottle

FSC - Forest Stewardship Council

The FSC promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests.

It ensures that the harvest of timber and non-timber products maintains the forest's biodiversity, productivity and ecological processes.  Forest management also provides strong incentives to local people to sustain the forest resources and adhere to long-term management plans.  Forest operations are structured and managed so as to be sufficiently profitable, without generating financial profit at the expense of the forest resources, the ecosystem or affected communities.

Related Product: Briefcase Buddy