The Future of the Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 50 Years

Patagonia founder Chouinard and executive Stanley follow up 2012’s The Responsible Company, which chronicled Patagonia’s first 40 years, with a tepid, self-serving update disguised as a business program. They purport to provide advice on how to run an environmentally responsible company, but the presentation is little more than a glossy sales pitch for Patagonia, tracing its early days as an offshoot of Chouinard Equipment for Alpinists, a mountain-climbing gear company; lamenting Patagonia’s occasional missteps, such as the 1991 discovery that their cotton suppliers used insecticides that likely leeched into the ecosystems around the cotton fields; and highlighting its recent philanthropic activities, which include the 2022 decision to donate all of the company’s stock to a trust and a charitable organization. The scant guidance offered is heavy on bromides (“Doing the right thing usually gives people courage to do more of the right thing”), and an appendix enumerating how CEOs can make their businesses more environmentally and socially responsible includes a few useful suggestions (“Supplement air-conditioning systems with evaporative coolers on condensers”) alongside no-brainers (“Pay a living wage”). This will leave readers cold. Photos. (Sept.)