Built by climber Yvon Chouinard in the seventies, Patagonia is an outdoors clothing line with the mission and commitments to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm and to use business to inspire and implement solutions to environmental crisis. The seventies saw the first of their clothes for climbers as they began importing rugby shirts from England, and began selling cagoules, gloves, mittens and hats. After experimenting with materials and vivid colors, they began to shake up the market.

As word spread of global environmental issues such as deforestation, pollution, disappearance of wildlife and fish, and global warming, in 1986 Chouinard committed to donate 1% of sales to grassroots environmental organizations-a promise that has been kept ever since. Over the last 30 years donations totaling $70 million have been given to such organizations.

As a company they work hard to reduce their own role as a corporate pollutant, by using recycled-content in almost everything they do-from their catalogs to carpets. They incorporate environmentally friendly fabrics such as hemp into their products and over the years have eliminated various colors from their line which use toxic metals and sulfides. They have also made the switch to 100% organic cotton in their sportswear.

At Patagonia, a love of wild and beautiful places demands a participation in the fight to save them and help to reverse the steep decline in the overall environmental health of the planet.