Black Friday is going green.
On Monday, the high-end outdoor apparel and gear retailer Patagonia announced it will donate 100 percent of its Black Friday sales to grassroots environmental groups that protect local communities’ air, water and soil. The groups that will receive the money are small and typically underfunded, according the company’s press release.
Patagonia is expected to make over $2 million on Black Friday, CNN Money reported.
The California-based brand’s latest commitment to the planet was inspired by the U.S. presidential election.
“We definitely came up with the idea after the election,” Lisa Pike Sheehy, vice president of environmental activism at Patagonia, told CNN Money. “This is a difficult and divisive time for our country. I believe the environment is something we can all come together on. ... Environmental values are something we all embrace.”
However, President-elect Donald Trump announced on Monday that he plans to lift regulations on the fossil fuel sector and has tapped a noted climate-change denier to lead the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency. These decisions not only contradict the goal Secretary of State John Kerry announced last week to slash the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent, but also discount the economic potential of renewable energy.
“Trump in his energy agenda is very much looking towards the past, towards old ways, and we’ve really moved past that,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, chief program officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Huffington Post. “We’ve entered an era of progress fighting climate change. The fact that Trump is trying to turn back the clock with coal and shale gas just doesn’t make sense.”
Patagonia’s announcement on Monday is not out of character for the company, which has built its brand on valuing the environment. The company donates 1 percent of its daily global sales to green causes. In 2011, it urged its customers to buy fewer jackets to combat the fashion industry’s wasteful culture, and in March, it helped create a $35 million fund to help pay for rooftop solar installations.
The company is not without its faults. Patagonia is publicly committed to fair labor practices, but The Atlantic reported that it had issues with human trafficking, forced labor and exploitation in its supply chain. The company created a plan to rectify the issue.
Related
Before You Go
