Four areas we're working on, with the current numbers on each. Where we haven't got there yet, we say so.
There, we said it. So much over-claiming, so much self-congratulating. So many carbon credits, so many trees.
Our industry builds products for recreation rather than necessity, which should give us all extra motivation to limit our impact. For us that means driving progress ourselves, and pushing the other brands we care about to do the same.
As a small brand it's hard to influence an entire supply chain, so we've been fast followers on environmental issues. We're moving closer to the front of the pack, and we plan to start taking some pulls.
If environmental impact is your biggest concern, look to Patagonia. They balance commercial goals against environmental and social impact, and they give back at a scale we don't. They don't always get it right, we weren't fans of "Don't Buy This Jacket", but that's what happens when you take risks at the front, and they lead by example while building a strong business.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order. We design for longevity, working out where each product is most likely to fail and reinforcing it. We design for repairability too, choosing constructions that make repairs cheaper and easier.
Every product carries a lifetime warranty against defects. We repair garments at our Squamish headquarters and through qualified repair centres in Europe, the UK and the US.
Technical apparel may be one of the first industries to significantly reduce or eliminate forever chemicals. PFAS, per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, a subset of the wider PFC category, are in cosmetics, cookware, electronics, apparel, toilet paper and food packaging. They're often described as inert in finished products, but they're also used during manufacturing, and they accumulated in the ocean through extensive illegal dumping between roughly 1950 and 2000.
With lifespans of hundreds or thousands of years and some already banned for toxicity, the push is on to replace the whole family. But they're valued for water and oil resistance, and they're not easily replaced without losing performance.
If you've been at this a while and feel like DWR treatments don't work as well as they used to, you're right. Collectively we've stepped back on performance to step forward on the environment. We want both, and the research continues.
