Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, 87, has a life update: He’s been “working harder than an 87-year-old should.” However, as detailed in the company’s latest Work in Progress Report, which details Chouinard’s decision to give away his wealth and devote the company’s excess profits to literally saving the planet, he feels he doesn’t have a choice. “The planet is in bad shape,” Chouinard wrote in the report.
Patagonia explained that the report is called “Work in Progress” to refer to the notion that the company sees itself as an experiment in doing business differently, and is a work in progress itself. Over the past year of working on the report, Patagonia added, the company decided to include narrative storytelling for context, along with data and metrics.
For his part, Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert offered a note of restraint: “The last thing we wanted this progress report to be was page after page of self-congratulation.” He acknowledged the difficulty of this mission, describing the process as sometimes being “messy,” and sometimes “painful,” but ultimately resulting in progress. He also offered a serious warning: “If we don’t clean up our mess, we’ll be history.”
Chouinard, a billionaire before he started giving his wealth away, emphasized that threats to planetary health are increasing, the climate and nature crisis is worsening, and the truth is being obscured in a sea of misinformation. He noted that even after decades of activism and corporate reform, what is clear is that for all the work Patagonia has done on its products and in its supply chain, and all the money it has given away to environmental nonprofits, it is “still not enough.”
The report reveals a civic-minded company, grappling with internal tension between holding true to its purpose and facing harsh economic realities, including trade wars and assaults on nature. Matt Dwyer, VP of Product Footprint, conjured up a metaphor that conveyed maybe why Patagonia sees things as such a work in progress: “The more layers of the onion you peel, the more you cry.”
The numbers behind the narrative
When Chouinard gave the company away in 2022, the ownership transfer solved how Patagonia’s core values would remain intact beyond the founders’ lifetimes and unlocked a definitive way to distribute more money toward environmental preservation. Under the new structure, Patagonia famously claims that “Earth is now our only shareholder.” The company is now ultimately controlled by the Patagonia Purpose Trust, whose sole objective is to maximize efforts to save the planet, rather than maximizing shareholder value, which is the typical corporate pursuit.
Patagonia detailed extensive ongoing work to manage its impacts, including eliminating “forever chemicals” (PFAS) from all new products starting in Spring 2025, and pursuing living wages in its supply chain. The bulk of their emissions—nearly 99%—comes from the supply chain, making large-scale decarbonization “expensive” and difficult to achieve alone.
There are some notable achievements from the past year, such as reaching 98% renewable electricity for its global owned and/or operated offices and facilities and getting over 95% of its products made in Fair Trade Certified™ factories. As of 2024, 39% of factories are paying a living wage, and an additional 29% are paying wages that are 80% of living wages or more.
The Holdfast Collective, funded by Patagonia’s profits, has committed more than $142 million toward planet-healing projects, including protection of millions of acres of land. Gellert is philosophical, almost apologetic about the limited progress in the report: “Patagonia is a paradox,” he wrote. “Our charter mandates we follow social and environmentally responsible practices, yet every product we make takes irreplaceable resources from the planet. Our existence seems counter to our purpose. That tension is not lost on us.”
Chouinard noted that while he has returned to his roots in design and working on product quality, he feels an “even deeper responsibility” to help the company succeed and provide a counter to “the prevailing extractive model of capitalism.” If enough companies join together and decide the planet takes precedence over profit, he added, “We can change the world. We could change capitalism for good. We might even save the planet.” As the report makes clear, convincing other companies to join in this quest is a work in progress.
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