In an unconventional step to address climate change and the environmental disaster, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard said on Wednesday that he is donating the outdoor-apparel company to help combat climate change.
In a message published on the firm’s website, Chouinard said that he had transferred ownership of the 1973-founded, $3 billion-valued company to a trust established to safeguard the company’s principles and objectives as well as a nonprofit organization.
This planet is now our only stockholder, it read. The Holdfast Collective is a non-profit organization devoted to alleviating the environmental problem and protecting natural habitats, and 100% of the company’s nonvoting shares have been donated to them.
To further aid in the fight against climate change, Patagonia will give any surplus funds to the Holdfast Collective in the form of a dividend, as stated in a press statement. In general, the corporation expects to distribute a dividend of about $100 million every year, albeit this figure is subject to fluctuate based on the state of the company’s finances.
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“That’s sort of ridiculous to say but it doesn’t surprise me,” said Josh Ewing, who worked with Patagonia to extend Bears Ears.
Ewing, who now runs the Rural Climate Partnership, has had the chance to “appreciate the really unique and unparalleled leadership that the Chouinard’s, as well as other employees at Patagonia, have placed into conservation and climate leadership.”
Patagonia stated in 2021 that it would no longer sell its items at the famous Wyoming ski resort, after one of the resort’s owners held a fundraiser in 2020 with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and other Republicans who support Trump.
Traditional kinds of activism have also been undertaken by the firm. In addition to using eco-friendlier materials in its goods, Patagonia has long given away 1% of its income to environmental groups working at the grassroots level and plans to continue doing so in the future.
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