Page 67 - EarthHeroes

The shop was packed with people, shouting and jostling. Some held huge boxes over their heads. Others lunged towards stacks of televisions and laptops. As Yvon watched the chaos unfold on screen, a man and woman grabbed
the same box, tugging and fighting over it. At the entrance, hundreds more people who had queued all night pushed their way in as security guards looked on helplessly.
Yvon switched off his television. The 73-year-old businessman opened his copy of the New York Times. He smiled. Good. There it was – a full-page advert of
a Patagonia black fleece jacket and the headline: “DON’T BUY THIS JACKET”. The advert explained that it took 135 litres of water and produced over nine kilograms of carbon dioxide to make and transport the jacket. It concluded, “The environmental cost of everything we make is astonishing . . . Don’t buy what you don’t need.”
It was Black Friday 2011 – the last Friday in November, when many shops and online retailers slash their prices and millions of bargain hunters begin their Christmas shopping. Patagonia is the hugely successful company Yvon Chouinard founded in the early 1970s. It makes outdoor clothing for climbing, surfing, skiing, fishing and trail-running. For many companies, Black Friday is the day they make the most money in all the year, but Yvon wants people to buy less even if it puts him out of business. This is because for Patagonia the planet is more important than profit.
Although his company is worth millions of dollars, Yvon doesn’t live the life you might imagine. He drives an old car, wears clothes over 20 years old and, now in his eighties, still goes fly-fishing, kayaking, surfing and hiking. He prefers gardening to meetings. He never wanted to be a businessman; when he was growing up, his passions were rock climbing and the outdoors.
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