Why I Love Patagonia, Part 1

Okay, obviously Patagonia Boy was found there, but I've loved Patagonia deeply since 2003. Here's my latest reason: they have a feature on their website called "The Footprint Chronicles." When you are looking at a product (not sure if it's for all), you can click on the Footprint Chronicles and they will tell you why this product is environmentally good, bad, and how they feel about it. For example, I'm buying a wool baselayer. The footprint for this is that the wool comes from well run ranches, the dying factory does not use heavy metals, the shirt is sewn domestically, but the wool travels from New Zealand. The company is very honest about the fact that while they are making many right choices when making this product, the environmental cost of getting wool from 16,000 miles away is huge.

This is just one of the reasons why I love this company. People will complain about expense, but any time we spend money, it's like we're making our vote for what we believe in. So, I'm going to keep spending money at Patagonia and Whole Foods because I think they are doing the best they can for the environment in their market. I believe that one of the things we can do if we want change is to be clear about the change we want.