Page 70 - EarthHeroes

on-site children’s day care centre, which is unusual in America. This was started by Yvon’s wife, Malinda, who also joined the company, so she and other staff could bring their children
to work and spend time with them during the day. Yvon
and Malinda’s son and daughter, Fletcher and Claire, now work in the company.
Patagonia does all it can to ensure that its clothing is as sustainable as possible. Twenty years ago, it switched to organic cotton to cut use of pesticides, and the company ensures that its factories do not pollute the environment
or treat workers badly. Patagonia only uses down – or fine feathers – recycled from cushions, bedding and clothes that can’t be re-sold, and its fleece clothing is made from recycled plastic bottles. Other big companies, such as Walmart, have come to them for advice about how to make their own businesses greener.
Yvon believes that to save the natural world customers need to stop demanding cheap and disposable things, and urges people to buy only what they need and to make those items last. You can send your Patagonia clothes back to be repaired, or watch their online videos to learn how to fix things yourself. You can also return your old Patagonia clothing and they will find it a new home, and if it is beyond repair, they will recycle it. They never want the things they make to end up in landfill or an incinerator.
Patagonia supports good causes too. In the early 1970s, it helped a scientist to protect his local river from development by giving him office space and money to continue his work. Since 1985, the company has donated millions of dollars to thousands of small organisations working for the environment. They do this through their scheme ‘1% for the Planet’, where they give away one per cent
of their annual sales to help projects ranging from creating an organic seed bank in France to stopping a nuclear power station being built in Japan, and from saving red squirrels in Ireland to protecting wetlands and native fish in Kenya. Thousands of companies across the world have followed Patagonia’s example by introducing an ‘Earth tax’ on their own profits. On Black Friday 2016 Patagonia donated all its profits from the day – naming it ‘100% for the Planet’.
Over the years, the company has campaigned on many environmental issues, such as fighting truck pollution in the Alps and protecting the last wild rivers in
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