Dear Editor:

Imagine a 14-year-old rock climber launching a business in his parents’ back yard. Imagine a happenstance conversation that gave the 14-year-old an idea that worked leading him to become the CEO-founder of Patagonia. Imagine running a profitable company, whose mission innovates product designs to simultaneously improve our environment. Yvon Chouinard has been the first CEO whose passion is to find negative environmental impacts from his product and improve the product to reduce the negative impact. Like a patient rock climber, he develops and improves as environmental issues are revealed.

I have always been confused when CEOs with products that have negative impacts on earth’s atmosphere seem stuck in the mud and clinging to a rock rather than seeking better methods of production to reduce negative impacts. Are these CEOs unable to improve their products or are they just clinging to the money rock? Chouinard’s simple approach at last helps me to answer that question. Mr. Chouinard gives me hope that more CEOs may be also be focused on production improvements that eliminate or reduce negative impacts on the environment.

Chouinard’s first success was a rock climber’s piton. Every climbing trip sparked new ideas for improvement. He chose Antoine de Saint Exupery’s guiding principle of simplicity. His success, however, was also becoming a villain as it damaged the rock, causing their first environmental step by pulling out of this particular model and successfully developing an alternative in aluminum chocks, which left the climbing rocks unaltered and clean. His next inspiration came from a rugby shirt that protected the neck and kept climbers warm. Clothing soon became a great addition to the business and ultimately led to improvements in the agricultural cotton business, where 25 percent of all toxic pesticides are used.

Today Chounard knows that their businesses create pollution as a by-product. Their goal has been and continues to be working to reduce or eliminate those harms. This CEO manages to make profit for investors while donating 1 percent of sales or 10 percent of profits, whichever is greater, to grassroots efforts. Here is proof business can be successful even when incorporating implementation of solutions for environmental issues it creates.

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb