Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, is a self-described 'dirtbag' whose company employs people with a 'love of wild and beautiful places,' a love which 'demands participation in the fight to save them, and to help reverse the steep decline in the overall environmental health of our planet.' This mission stems from a realization by Chouinard that his company was in part responsible for the overconsumption he so reviled. But unlike much hyperbole surrounding businesses with a desire to implement CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), Chouinard’s commitment was make or break: 'They say if you want to be a samurai, you can't be afraid of dying, and as soon as you flinch, you get your head cut off. I'm not afraid of losing this business.'
Such fervor has seen Chouinard push Patagonia to choose business partners based on values, not mere commercial efficiency. This was done through careful selection of what goes into every product from using less environmentally harmful dyes through to reducing the amount of packaging used to deliver the end product. Perhaps the best example of this philosophy is not in the detail but in the overarching concept: reduce, repair, reuse, and recycle. These core principles can be seen at work in Patagonia’s recycled products made from Polartec fleece, launched in 2005 and their attempts to reduce landfill waste by creating more durable products with a longer working life.
Yet such processes created tension within the company as the need to remain profitable clashed with the far reaching ideals of Patagonia’s mission statement. Despite his earlier claim to not being afraid to lose the business, Chouinard, in a nod to corporate realities, acknowledged the need to turn a profit in his book Let My People Go Surfing: 'It’s okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise you’re just crazy.' Yet for all this dose of realism, Patagonia has proved time and again 'that making decisions in favor of environmental reasons always proved to be a good business in subsequent years.'
