One of the planet’s most dedicated individuals, who has spent nearly his entire life both exploring and experiencing the natural world and making novel and long-lasting contributions to saving it, has again stepped forward with a monumental effort that will have far-reaching impacts for decades to come. Yvon Chouinard, who has always said that Patagonia’s mission was to protect nature, along with his wife Malinda and children, are donating their company to planet Earth… literally.
Chouinard and his family have transferred their roughly $3 billion voting interest in Patagonia to the newly established Patagonia Purpose Trust, which will ensure that the company continues its long-standing commitment to corporate responsibility and profit donation to environmental and social organizations and causes. The remaining 98% of the company was donated to the Holdfast Collective, a non-profit dedicated to defending nature and fighting the environmental crisis. The Collective will receive all of the profits, about $100 million a year, to flight climate change and safeguard some of the planet’s dwindling wild places. This is a monumental example of true corporate responsibility and the potential that large companies have for changing the world in a positive way, and is in striking contrast to the climate deception that the fossil fuel industry has practiced for decades. The planet needs more Yvon Chouinards.
In Yvon’s own words:
“Earth is now our only shareholder. If we have any hope of a thriving planet – much less a business – it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have. This is what we can do.
I never wanted to be a businessman. I started as a craftsman, making climbing gear for my friends and myself, then got into apparel. As we began to witness the extent of global warming and ecological destruction and our own contribution to it, Patagonia committed to using our company to change the way business was done. If we could do the right thing while making enough money to pay the bills, we could influence customers and other businesses, and maybe change the system along the way.
…in 2018, we changed the company’s purpose to: We’re in business to save our home planet. While we’re doing our best to address the environmental crisis, it’s not enough. We needed to find a way to put more money into fighting the crisis while keeping the company’s values intact.
Despite its immensity, the Earth’s resources are not infinite, and it’s clear we’ve exceeded its limits. But it’s also resilient. We can save our planet if we commit to it.”
“Earth is now our only shareholder. If we have any hope of a thriving planet – much less a business – it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have. This is what we can do.
I never wanted to be a businessman. I started as a craftsman, making climbing gear for my friends and myself, then got into apparel. As we began to witness the extent of global warming and ecological destruction and our own contribution to it, Patagonia committed to using our company to change the way business was done. If we could do the right thing while making enough money to pay the bills, we could influence customers and other businesses, and maybe change the system along the way.
…in 2018, we changed the company’s purpose to: We’re in business to save our home planet. While we’re doing our best to address the environmental crisis, it’s not enough. We needed to find a way to put more money into fighting the crisis while keeping the company’s values intact.
Despite its immensity, the Earth’s resources are not infinite, and it’s clear we’ve exceeded its limits. But it’s also resilient. We can save our planet if we commit to it.”
Tom Brokaw, who spent over half a century as a journalist at NBC News, including 22 years as the anchor of the “NBC Nightly News”, and is a longtime friend of Yvon Chouinard, responded to the gift of Patagonia to the planet with an editorial in the New York Times.
“Yvon Chouinard still possesses, in the proud parlance of the climbing community, the “dirtbag” sensibility. In the 1960s, he lived to climb and made do selling handmade climbing gear so he could devote himself to the mountains.
Even today, at the age of 83, when he visits my wife and me in our New York City apartment, he’s likely to spread out his sleeping bag on our sofa when he retires for the night.
I know Yvon best as a rock climber, fly fisherman, family man, and visionary. With a genius for invention and design, this self-taught blacksmith founded Patagonia, the outdoor clothing retailer, and turned it into a global brand.
Yvon Chouinard has been my friend for 40 years. He has risked my life on many occasions on rambling adventures at the ends of the earth. “Just do what I tell you,” he would assure me. And believe me, I did.
Yvon is old-fashioned and has very strong values that he doesn’t hesitate to express. For a long time, I argued that he was too pessimistic. Recently, with the invasion of the coronavirus, the continuing assault on the world’s remaining wild places, and the ever-rising temperatures, I have moved sharply in his direction. I have become impatient, too.
Even though he had an iconic outdoor clothing business, his personal wardrobe seems to consist of extremely well-worn climbing trousers and an old Patagonia shirt or jacket. When I arranged for him to talk to a gathering of Silicon Valley whiz kids, he let me know he didn’t have a sports jacket. That didn’t keep him from lecturing his audience on their failure to spend more time and money on saving the environment. “Brokaw and I are going to hell for not doing enough,” he told them, “but you still have a chance.”
He knows his time is running out on his crusade to save the planet. He’s trying to do his part and he’s impatient with the rest of us. A mutual friend, the writer, and sportsman Tom McGuane calls him “the tiny terror.” With his latest move, Yvon has once again set a gigantic standard for others to consider.”
John Elkington, a pioneering authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development remarked that:
“This is one of those heart-stopping moments when the apparently impossible becomes suddenly possible — and then ultimately, through a dazzling display of leadership, inevitable….”
Elkington said the announcement was “totally in character, yet still blew my socks off…Chouinard’s move puts Patagonia “light-years” ahead of other corporations aspiring to balance business interests and social responsibility,
For me, Yvon has always represented true north…And hundreds of CEOs and other business leaders will now be forced to reconsider their own takes on the climate challenge.”
The Ventura-based outdoor apparel company was founded on Chouinard’s love of the great outdoors. His story is a unique one… growing up in Burbank and starting climbing while still in his teens, surfing along Highway 1, and eventually moving into his car and becoming a skilled rock climber in the Yosemite Valley.
Patagonia was arguably started in 1957 when Yvon created his own line of reusable climbing spikes that were hammered into the rock. After discovering that his spikes were damaging the rock, he phased out of that business and developed an alternative in 1972 — and it quickly became a hit with climbers. In an early catalog, Chouinard advocated the value of enjoying the wilderness while preserving it and not leaving any trace behind.
Over the decades, Patagonia has displayed a unique brand of corporate activism backed by its commitment to sustainability. In 2018, the company changed its mission statement to something plain and direct: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” In more recent years, its environmental activism has extended directly into the political sphere as well.
“We have always considered Patagonia an experiment in doing business in unconventional ways,” Chouinard wrote in his book “Let My People Go Surfing.” “None of us were certain it was going to be successful, but we did know that we were not interested in ‘doing business as usual.’”
Coastal Care applauds Yvon Chouinard, his family, and Patagonia for their long-term dedication to saving the planet and for this newest contribution to their mission.
