Why I'm Not Writing Off Patagonia

Selling jackets won't solve climate change. But dismissing anyone who falls short of impossible ideals leaves us with nothing but a sense of moral superiority.

I just got back from the Ski Industry Climate Conference, hosted by Atomic, Protect our Winters Europe, and The Winter Sports Sustainability Network (WSN). There are a lot of takeaways I’ll dive into in the coming weeks, but overall, it was a sobering event. The industry is up against massive, systemic issues that intersect economics, policy, climate, and the economies of entire countries.

And yet, my main takeaway was this: even when the problems are bigger than any one company or initiative can realistically solve, there are people trying.

Is every project good enough to drive the kind of radical change we actually need? No. But is the right response to throw up our hands and say, “what’s the point,” or to tear down anyone who is doing their best in an incredibly constrained system? For me, also no.

The world could use a little hope. There's enough chaos and bad news without tearing down the brands that are at least trying, even if they're not single-handedly solving the climate crisis.

Which brings me to a piece that’s been making the rounds this week, and to the reaction it sparked.

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Is Patagonia just a marketing trick?

Foster Huntington, who worked at Patagonia for about a year and a half in 2012–2013, published a thoughtful essay about his experiences there. It gained significant traction (particularly on Substack), with reactions ranging from “I’ll never buy Patagonia again” to people treating it as a shocking revelation that Patagonia is, in fact, a business, with all of the internal politics and issues that entails.

The piece highlights a few key experiences that resulted in his disillusionment with Patagonia. Yvon Chouinard was particularly harsh in a design meeting. The company had brand guidelines around not showing fossil fuel consumption in marketing. Patagonia did contract work for the US military from US-based factories but still did the majority of production offshore. The growth of the company is at odds with its messaging and marketing around conservation and climate change.

My purpose here isn’t to refute any of Huntington’s critiques; I enjoyed his prose and perspective. Most are fair, and some, like the outdoor industry’s relationship with the military and the challenges of US-based technical manufacturing have been covered extensively. I’m more interested in the reaction to his piece.

I’m not Patagonia’s biggest fan. I’ve written critically about them before, especially around the time they restructured ownership. I pointed out that conservative billionaires have used similar tax strategies, and that there is reason to be cautious about elevating Chouinard as one of the so-called “good billionaires.” I think Patagonia sometimes sucks up a disproportionate amount of oxygen in the industry, overshadowing the work other companies are doing. I’ve also questioned whether their marketing accurately conveys the scale of the challenges they face.

Putting Patagonia on a pedestal

But even if we acknowledge the very real contradictions at the heart of their business model, there is little question that Patagonia is pushing the industry forward, and they’re doing more than 90% of similar brands.

Here’s what Patagonia’s scale has enabled: $140 million to grassroots environmental groups since 1985 through 1% for the Planet, which they co-founded. The ownership restructure sends an estimated $100 million annually to environmental work. They co-founded the United Repair Centre, whose repair infrastructure handles tens of thousands of items each year across multiple brands. Their Reno facility repaired 175,000 items last year. Worn Wear kept 212,000 products circulating. And that’s before you get into the activism and material innovation that’s pushed the entire industry forward. None of that means they’re solving climate change, or even hitting their own targets consistently.

Their own 2025 Work in Progress Report highlights many of the contradictions about their business pretty brutally. It shows they hit only 6% of their goal to source 50% of synthetics from secondary waste. They recover less than 1% of clothes designed to be recycled. Scope 3 emissions (supply chain stuff they can’t fully control), represent 99% of their environmental impact.

Patagonia is a Work in Progress

In my view, their failures don’t negate the work they’ve done in material innovation, repair infrastructure, or funding activism. Those are non-insignificant things that were driven by Patagonia’s growth as a brand.

Why does Huntington’s perspective resonate?

Huntington has spent years building a reputation as a kind of wandering outdoor philosopher-poet. He’s the “original” #vanlife guy, who opted out of a traditional path and built a life and career on his own terms. In many ways, he embodies the exact lifestyle Patagonia markets: authentic, adventurous, anti-corporate. When someone with that kind of credibility publishes a “behind the curtain” essay, it carries more emotional weight than a straight reporting piece.

This topic in particular resonates because it taps into something that many of us already feel: that sustainability marketing is mostly bullshit, that companies claiming to do good are just optimizing their image, and that there is always a more cynical truth lurking beneath the surface.

We love a good takedown, especially when it targets companies that market themselves (explicitly or implicitly) as better than the rest. There is often a weird sense of satisfaction in watching a “too good to be true” brand mythology collapse, in realizing that the emperor has no clothes. Or, in this case, that the clothes were made in the same factories as everyone else.

The “making a jacket that’s marginally less bad for the environment is a mechanism to stop global warming is akin to believing that the solution to alcoholism is drinking light beer” quote is catchy and damning. It works because it’s true, if lacking a bit of nuance.

But the path from where we’re currently at to a non-extractive (or even less extractive) economy will require companies like Patagonia working within the current system to invest in infrastructure, proofs of concept, new technologies, and activism to make a transition even remotely possible. That work will be imperfect by definition.

Scale creates leverage that can have different impacts than individual consumer choices. It's not just "marginally less bad jackets", it's using market position to shift supplier practices, fund litigation and activism, and help build infrastructure that makes alternative models more feasible in the future.

Systems aren’t going to transform overnight, no matter how much we want them to.

Writing off imperfect work

My concern is that for some readers, Huntington’s piece seems to function as permission to write off everything Patagonia has done as some kind of decades-long, carefully constructed con, all because the company fails to live up to expectations. Those expectations are partly of their own making, and partly a creation of consumers and media who elevated Yvon and the company to unhealthy heights of hero worship.

I’ve seen more than a few reactions that revolve around “Never buying Patagonia again”, or treat the revelation that Patagonia is a business as a huge betrayal. There’s a sense of despondency, that they’re “just another big bad brand that only cares about money.” I’ve seen too many reposts on this topic from people who are connected to gear development, purchase, advertising, promotion, and influencing, even if the companies they work with can’t hold a candle to Patagonia’s track record.

The average consumer doesn’t buy a new jacket because they want to solve climate change. They need (or just want) a new jacket. Given that reality, shouldn’t we want them to buy from a company that is at least trying to do better?

After all, what’s the alternative? If your goal is to not buy anything, and focus on secondhand and repair, amazing. Else, there are few brands to support that are objectively better. Even Patagonia’s most ardent detractors in the industry will begrudgingly acknowledge that they’re doing most things better than anyone else, they’re just annoyed by the marketing that can feel “over the top”.

The tensions are real

Huntington is right on many fronts. The most sustainable jacket is a used one. We need bigger, more radical shifts in how the clothing industry functions in order to affect real change. Patagonia’s workplace culture may well have been exactly as he described, and Yvon might be a bit abrasive. The gap between their brand marketing and operational reality is real, and it can be jarring, especially if you were influenced by Let My People Go Surfing or don’t keep up with their progress reports. Selling jackets won’t solve climate change. I’ve received emails from people at Patagonia who acknowledge wrestling with that tension every day.

But here’s a simple thought exercise: would the industry (or world) be better or worse if Patagonia didn’t exist? Or if they never grew beyond where they were at 10 or 20 years ago? An accounting based purely on the emissions math might say yes, but I find it harder to answer.

Would workers benefit from one less buyer influencing Fair Trade certification? What would grassroots organizations (Patagonia supported 842 in FY25) lose if funding from Patagonia disappeared? Would the shift away from PFAs have happened as quickly without Patagonia’s investment in research and development, or the pressure placed on the rest of the industry? Would issues like Jumbo Wild, Bears Ears, and dam removal have received the same amount of grassroots support?

The world is, undeniably, a bit fucked right now. All I’m trying to hold onto is the idea that imperfect efforts still matter.

We can criticize. We should criticize. These are worthy discussions. Everyone has their own line, and if feeling tricked by Patagonia’s marketing is yours, that’s absolutely valid. But we should also be capable of acknowledging effort, even when it’s flawed or falls short.

Perhaps that’s naive. But the alternative is writing off everyone who’s not solving everything perfectly, and I think that leaves us with nothing except our own sense of moral superiority, a few reshares, and a world that stays exactly as broken as it is.