Patagonia's Don't Buy Advertisement

Patagonia ran an advertisement on Black Friday (the Friday after the USA Thanksgiving that for some strange reason starts the Christmas shopping season) and Cyber-Monday that I only heard about on the radio. So I went and did a quick Internet search.
Here's the advertisement:


Patagonia (PDF)/Promo image


While this advertisement may bring more people to Patagonia to shop, I don't believe that this is the reason for the running the ad in the New York Times. I do think Patagonia is very concerned about their (and our) environmental impact. As they say, there is more to the purchase price:

It’s Black Friday, the day in the year retail turns from red to black and starts to make real money. But Black Friday, and the culture of consumption it reflects, puts the economy of natural systems that support all life firmly in the red. We’re now using the resources of one-and-a-half planets on our one and only planet. ...

The environmental cost of everything we make is astonishing. Consider the R2® Jacket shown, one of our best sellers. To make it required 135 liters of water, enough to meet the daily needs (three glasses a day) of 45 people. Its journey from its origin as 60% recycled polyester to our Reno warehouse generated nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, 24 times the weight of the finished product. This jacket left behind, on its way to Reno, two-thirds its weight in waste.

I also find their adding two new "R's" to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle a great insight and idea:

REDUCE
WE make useful gear that lasts a long time
YOU don’t buy what you don’t need
REPAIR
WE help you repair your Patagonia gear
YOU pledge to fix what’s broken
REUSE
WE help find a home for Patagonia gear you no longer need
YOU sell or pass it on
RECYCLE
WE will take back your Patagonia gear that is worn out
YOU pledge to keep your stuff out of the landfill and incinerator
 REIMAGINE
TOGETHER we reimagine a world where we take only what nature can replace 

In the course of the search, I also found the article below ("Don't Buy This Shirt Unless You Need It").

I couldn't help but find it a bit serendipitous after my last Monday's blogging about how we tend to attempt to purchase items with a long life (sometimes we choose wisely, sometimes not).

Patagonia Article:

Don't Buy This Shirt Unless You Need It by Yvon Chouinard & Nora Gallagher 

(Late Summer 2004)

 
Chouinard and Gallagher start by talking about the Chumash Nation that lived in Northern California, near the Patagonia headquarters, and "Gerald Amos, a member (and former chief) of the Haisla Nation in Kitamaat, northwest Canada" as examples of other types of economies before continuing with these tid-bits. Note that I have included them here to prompt you to read the article.

Such lives are often called subsistence, which brings to mind the barest, hardscrabble survival. But there is another way to look at them. At Patagonia we choose to call them “economies of abundance.” In an economy of abundance, there is enough. Not too much. Not too little. Enough. Most important, there is enough time for the things that matter: relationships, delicious food, art, games and rest.

Many of us in the United States live in what is thought to be abundance, with plenty all around us, but it is only an illusion, not the real thing. The economy we live in is marked by “not enough.” ...

We don't have enough money, and we also don’t have enough time. We don’t have enough energy, solitude or peace. We are the world’s richest country, yet our quality of life ranks 14th in the world. As Eric Hoffer, a mid-20th century philosopher, put it, “You can never get enough of what you don’t really need to make you happy."

And while we work harder and harder to get more of what we don’t need, we lay waste to the natural world. Dr. Peter Senge, author and MIT lecturer, says, “We are sleepwalking into disaster, going faster and faster to get to where no one wants to be.”

We might call this economy, the one we live in, the economy of scarcity. (page 1)

Lest you think the economy of abundance is gone with the old Chumash, consider Europe. Europeans still buy only a few well-made clothes and keep them for many years. Their houses and apartments tend to be smaller than ours; they rely on public transportation, and small, efficient home appliances and cars. Europeans enjoy a 25 percent higher quality of life than Americans (while we consume 75 percent more than they do). (page 2)

I've blogged about this before. Check out What's the Economy For Anyway? In the essay by the same name, John de Graaf explores how the United States has shrunk in overall happiness/health/lifestyle while Europe has gained in these areas. In fact, Europeans have caught up to the USA in economic "production," too.

In the economy of abundance, wild salmon are given back rivers in which to run. Trees grow to their natural height. Water is clean. A sense of mystery and enchantment is restored to the world. We humans live within our means and, best of all, we have the time to enjoy what we have. (page 2)