Patagonia Case

Are you worried about the environment? Do you know how you are contributing to the problem? Have you ever wondered how the clothes you buy can impact the environment? Well if so, buying from Patagonia will allow you to be environmentally conscious. Patagonia is a clothing company that focus is on selling environmentally safe outdoor apparel. They quickly became set apart from their competition by their overwhelming concern for the environment. Their mission is to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm and use their business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. This mission is what has set them apart by leading the green movement in the business world. They use environmentally sensitive materials like organic cotton, hemp, recycled products and solar energy. They have integrated a workplace code of conduct which allows them to follow their product throughout the industry. They monitor the warehouses, garment workers and sewing factories to make sure they abide by their mission. They also sponsor and participate in a host of environmental initiatives that range from promoting wildlife corridors to combating genetic engineering. They give millions in grants and in-kind donations to grassroots environmental organizations, as well as, encourage their employees to help. Patagonia is leading the forefront of environmentalism.

Patagonia learned that 25% of all toxic pesticides used in agriculture were used in the cultivation of cotton and that those toxic pesticides resulted in pollution of soil and water, and affected the health of the cotton field workers. Farmers had grown cotton organically for thousands of years prior to 1947 and after visiting various cotton fields and smelling the selenium ponds and seeing the lunar landscape of the fields, they decided that they could not continue to make products that laid waste to the earth this way. So in 1994, they made the decision to make 100% organic cotton sportswear. In Patagonia searches to find more environmentally friendly fabrics, they found hemp and began using it in some products in combination with recycled polyester. They also use recycled contents in the building of their distribution center in Reno, Nevada, everything from rebar to carpet to the partitions between the bathroom toilets were from recycled products. All new stores were built environmentally friendly and previous ones were increasingly improved. The stores and factories reduced energy through the use of solar tracking skylights and radiant heating systems. They also improved their dyes by eliminated colors from the line that required the use of toxic metals and sulfides and began to reduce our own corporate pollution by using recycled paper for their catalogs and recycled polyester for their fleece.

Patagonia promotes fair labor practices and safe working conditions throughout their supply chain. In order to ensure that goal, they hired a Manager of Social Responsibility to monitor social compliance throughout the manufacturing process and to work with the Fair Labor Association. To guarantee their social and environmental impacts of the supply chain they started visiting the factories throughout the world that did work for them. They looked for product quality as well as working conditions. To ensure that the factories provided safe working conditions, acceptable wages and did not use child labor, they made the decision not to do busy with any factory that they were not allowed to visit. Patagonia also educated their employees about factory workplace issues to help them understand how their own actions unwittingly caused factory workers to suffer longer work hours, deadline issues and stress. To show the consumer that this is important to Patagonia they launched the Footprint Chronicles. Footprints Chronicles is an interactive website that allows the consumer to track