No, your not reading an environmentalists to-do list, this statement above is the Mission statement of Patagonia the clothing company, which is a pure eco driven statement. Yvon Chouinard is the founder of Patagonia. He started the business selling piton’s out of his car in 1957 and along the path he has always defined his bottom line not as Wall Street has done so, but with the realization that everything his business did had an effect- mostly negative- on the environment. Which is why his newfound mission statement reflects a more urgent need for change.
Yvon is quite the hands on CEO, as he doesn’t sit in an office and dictate; he travels the planet, just like the folks who utilize his equipment and clothing, and his employees that source the materials for his clothing/equipment. As he looks around the planet in the past 20 plus years he can see a clear impact on how we are destroying the planet. He now realizes that Patagonia, the business, “exists to put into practice all the things that smart people are saying we have to do not only to save the planet but to save the economy.”
Yvon goes on to say, and this statement has been mirrored by other sustainability gurus, that in a broad sense “we need to work on the causes rather than the symptoms. You can throw money all day at symptomatic things, and you are not going to solve the problem.”
Check out Patagonia’s website- www.patagonia.com The content is getting more rich in environmental awareness plus if you want to see an effective example of a eco-philanthropic effort, Patagonia’s One Percent for the Planet, is a program put in place back in 1985 where companies, like Patagonia give back 1% of their sales to environmental charities. One percent recently hit the 1000th member mark and has given back $42 million to more than 1,700 groups. Yvon does not acknowledge this as a “Philanthropic” effort, but just a cost of doing business. He feels that every business is a polluter, and if they are not using nonrenewable resources, then they should “tax themselves”.
