Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and the company’s head of marketing, Vincent Stanley, have published a book outlining what they believe to be the required elements for doing responsible business.
The book, titled The Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 40 Years is a follow-up to Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, published to much acclaim in 2005.
“I co-wrote this book because I wanted to provide concise step-by-step solutions for people who want to green their business,” Chouinard said, “The Responsible Company is a practical sequel to Let my People Go Surfing and was written for individuals and businesses that want to stop causing unnecessary harm. Most notably, it includes checklists of activities that every company, including our own, needs to address in the coming years.”
Chouinard and Stanley attempt to articulate how companies can reduce the harm they cause, improve the quality of their business, and provide the kind of meaningful work everyone wants today. Their primary advice is to: reduce your environmental footprint (and its skyrocketing cost), make legitimate products that last, reclaim deep knowledge of your business and its supply chain to make the most of opportunities in the years to come, and earn the trust (and business) you’ll need by treating your workers, customers and communities with respect.
“Our hope is that the book will have as broad a readership as possible – not just business owners. People have power as individual consumers and citizens, but also as producers,” noted Vincent Stanley, “What we do at work to lighten the economy’s environmental and social footprint makes a far more significant difference than whether we personally recycle or drive a hybrid.”
Bart King is a PR/marketing communications consultant and principal at Cleantech Communications.
Source: Sustainable Brands