Patagonia’s billionaire founder gives away company to fight climate change

The popular outdoor apparel brand Patagonia is currently valued at US$3 billion and nets profits of $100 million a year, which will now used to fight climate change.

The founder of popular outdoor apparel brand Patagonia announced on Wednesday that he is giving the company away to a trust that will use its profits to fight climate change.

Yvon Chouinard, an early pioneer of alpine climbs in Yosemite National Park, transferred ownership of Patagonia to two new entities, a trust designed to preserve the company’s existing values and a non-profit organization working to combat climate change.

A statement by Chouinard, 83, read: “Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source. We’re making Earth our only shareholder.”

Currently, Patagonia is valued at US$3 billion and nets profits of $100 million a year, The New York Times reported.

“If we have any hope of a thriving planet — much less a thriving business — 50 years from now, it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have,” Chouinard wrote in the statement. “This is what we can do.”

Patagonia is a certified B Corp, meaning they are a private, for-profit corporation that voluntarily meets the highest standards for social and environmental performance.

Worried about maintaining the company’s values, Chouinard, his wife and their two adult children did not want to outright sell the company in order to donate the money toward climate action. They also did not want to take the company public for fear of “too much pressure to create short-term gain at the expense of long-term vitality and responsibility,” Chouinard wrote in the company statement.

“Truth be told, there were no good options available. So, we created our own,” he wrote. “Instead of ‘going public,’ you could say we’re ‘going purpose.’”