There is so much more to environmental conservation than just "climate change," and Patagonia has done much more around e.g. removing dams, minimizing PFCs in their products, recycling and increasing longevity of materials, and other actions that protect air, land, forests, rivers and oceans, and which encourage sustainable energy production.
Dear NYT and fellow readers, please don't throw this diversely interested company into some politically expedient climate change bucket. Their view on the environment is so much more.
For kids clothes this is a boon, I would buy my daughter a patagonia jacket from the patagonia outlet at 40% off, she grows out if it and I trade it in for a new jacket and get $20-$30 off of the new jacket. Her old jacket gets cleaned and sold to some other kid who can use it(they have a worn well portal where you can buy used gear), great for peoples pocketbooks, great for the environment - win all around.
This is my favorite political comment of the year!
I hope you won't mind my stealing it when one of my friends is shocked that we disagree on some political position or another.
It's humbling and refreshing to see someone disagreeing and acknowledging that it doesn't mean that they're right and the other side is wrong, and that it's ok to like 99% of someone else's agenda (my interpretation) without starting an I'm better than you campaign.
More of us should follow that line of thought, love your comment man!
Finally something I can almost totally agree with!
A lot of their stuff isn't to my style, but I've had really solid luck with the stuff that is. I've got multiple pairs of long underwear and down vests and such from back when I snowboarded a lot, again, all of them held up really well.
https://www2.hm.com/en_ca/sustainability-at-hm/our-work/clos...
Though on consideration, I would venture a guess that the purpose of each program might be as different as the governance of each company. Outcomes might be comparable, but I'd bet the arrival path and conversations were very divergent. Judging from this stark choice they've made in this post, the people at Patagonia are clearly thinking VERY differently than most boring and very profitable companies, and I presume that's not skin-deep.
And if so, maybe it's selling one short to glom them together in assessment, based mainly on outcomes instead of routes? I dunno, I could see someone defending either way of looking at it -- focussing on sameness because outcome's are the same, or differentness because paths to decisions differ :)
> the boxes and sorts the contents into three categories:
> Rewear: Wearable clothes are marketed as secondhand clothing.
> Reuse: If the clothes or textiles are not suitable for rewear, they’re turned into other products, such as remake collections or cleaning cloths.
> Recycle: All other clothes and textiles are shredded into textile fibers and used to make, for example, insulation materials.
The "Rewear" category is reselling the clothing.
Don’t fall for their narrative.
Not least because it opens the company up to fines for false advertising (e.g. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission regularly polices companies operating in Australia, which H&M does)
See also: Wells Fargo; Amazon
A former company that I worked for wanted their customers (Real Estate Agents) to fill out profiles. They wanted the account managers to encourage this behaviour so they tied the bonus/commission to having it filled out.
Needless to say, the customers had very little interest in filling out the profiles. I found all the account managers sitting around a table at a conference filling them out themselves instead of talking to the customers (as they should have been at the event).
A few even discovered they could fill the fields with '.' characters and game the system (they got caught and fired for crossing the line). The others just wasted valuable time they could have been selling products and got their bonuses.
It’s unfortunate that price prevents people from wanting or being able to invest in quality clothing that can last. If something is well made it seems like it can outlast cheaper garments several times over, and the environmental cost is reduced dramatically. Most garments like this really do cost a lot though; my nano puff hoody was around $350 CAD, for example. You can get stuff that looks the same for $50-$100. If I hadn’t experienced how nice it is first hand, I’d likely assume the nano is a waste of money and go with something cheaper too. Then of course at times in my life I couldn’t spend that much if I wanted to.
We have a bit of a crisis regardless. The garment industry is like a massive conveyor belt into landfills.
Also some t shirts from the 90 are still looking good, which is kinda incredible.
would you also get $20-30 off of a used jacket?
Personally, I end up donating many items to avoid the need to deal with eBay/Gumtree (Australia/UK marketplace).
> "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."
The letter doesn't say the words "climate change" but that's clearly what they are talking about. Instead, they do mention "global warming" which is part of what is referenced by "environmental crisis".
I don't think "global warming" is more or less politicized than the phrase "climate change". Maybe because "global warming" is slightly antiquated, it's less likely to produce knee jerk reactions?
I agree that the letter is trying its best to be politically inclusive, and I appreciate it.
> 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.
The New York Times didn't slip this in to mislead everyone.
Other examples include destruction of habitats, NO2 in the air, dumping waste in nature and rivers, lead that gets into nature etc.
Both are valid and there's obviously a lot of welcome, positive alignment.
The effects of climate change will be uneven across humanity, and many of the worst effects might be second-order (e.g. instability caused by mass migration).
There are other types of environmental change, like accumulation of so-called "forever chemicals", which have the potential to have a more direct effect on the entire human population, and potentially over a shorter time period than climate change. It's not clear to me that climate change is the greatest threat we face.
My vague concern is that overly emphasizing "climate change" means all these brains are thinking on just one small bit of surface of this larger project. We talk a ton about carbon because it's the tangible thing that brownian motions equally through the atmosphere and we can undeniably quantify, but the whole ship leaks across a number of dimensions. We need eyes and minds on all the little edges of the larger wicked problem: both convincing and creating fellow humans that we can be happy and healthy without unconstrained growth. There's a lot of baggage to work through.
The sheer eighth grade math of it is that we can't be anything but cancer or conquerors (at whatever scale) unless we get that under control on this finite planet <3
So this is the standard level of reading comprehension on HN these days?
LITERALLY the third sentence in the first paragraph.
>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***...
It’s a trick because nuance is easily exploited by people craven enough to exploit it. But it’s an important distinction for people who don’t understand why they’re having colder or wetter winters in temperate climate regions (example picked out of my locality).
The idea was to make it sound less severe, to please the Oil&Gas lobby. For the most part it worked as you now have environmentalist on the other side of the fence using it too.
I agree with the argument that climate change is maybe not accurate as some regions might cool as well. I would prefer "climate emergency" if I was in charge of the PR.
More punchy. More descriptive of actual events.
“Climate drift” sounds like the name of an AI bot, made specifically to create a narrative that underplays the seriousness and gravity of the extremely dangerous and deadly feedback loops that are appearing now in the global climate system.
I don't think it underplay anything. I understand that we must act. But with this name your arguments won't be heard.
The climate denialists of today are those believing that if it gets too much, we will have to do some efforts for a decade and boom, back to 1970 climate. I want to engage that belief, hence 'climate drift'
The point is that weather is changing so much that even climate is changing quickly now. Or, in a car metaphor: not only our velocity is increasing, our acceleration is also increasing m.
I think a stronger word like “climate emergency” would have been more appropriate.
The point is that weather is changing so much that even climate is changing quickly now. Or, in a car metaphor: not only our velocity is increasing, our acceleration is also increasing.
I think a stronger word like “climate emergency” would have been more appropriate.
Not a small problem,you know...
'change' doesn't carry this idea at all. Anyway, global warming was more descriptive, thus better to me.
Imagine the things we could do if more companies cared about giving back to the public good that enabled them to become what they are rather than using legal trickery to ignore the intent of the law.
"We need to fight climate change. I voted for ____."
"I don't think climate change is caused by humans. I voted for ____."
If you could perform the above task easily, then yes it's political.
so for a company with profits being the primary asset, itll grow even quicker, since there are no income taxable shareholders
For a very well planned change of ownership of an estate, see the UK royal family. The recent inheritance had zero death duties paid.
If they are giving away everything, then there is nothing to offset the donation (except the $17B).
So it kind of makes sense?
If own a single asset worth $1B and donate it all, I have no tax write off because I have no money.
If own a single asset worth $1B and donate it all, I have no tax write off because I have no money
Write offs carry forward to future years - you still get the write off even if you do t apply it.
They don’t get a write off here because the organization (that they created for this) is a 501c4 non-profit. Donations to those are not considered tax deductible.
One of the most interesting parts of this is the choice to make Holdfast a C4. They really wanted to make this a political organization, and were willing to forgo a staggering amount of tax savings - in fact, $17m in tax donating away a $3b asset. Probably the least effective estate planning from a raw $ perspective in history.
Major props to the family for doing this - this is now the definition of "putting your money where your mouth is", and I hope this model is a success and serves as a template for others to follow.