Yvon Chouinard, author of "let my people surf"  was the keynote speaker for the Green Symposium which will continue on from 8-5 tomorrow.  He is the founder of Patagonia, a multimillion dollar sports clothing and equipment business.

The most important thing he said to us this evening was "Lead the examined life." "Ask a lot of questions." That is why he is unique as a businessman and how he has created a unique, responsible business model for his company.

"If you want to understand the entrepreneur, he began, "study the juvenile delinquent."

He probably thinks he narrowly missed becoming the latter, having been a French speaking kid with a name that sounded feminine to his English speaking fellow Californians. He loved to fish, surf, climb and became expert at avoiding the demands of the classroom.

You can read the fascinating story of how his business developed here:

His love of the sport of climbing and adherence to the philosophy of leaving nothing but footprints, led him to revolutionize the sport first creating pitons that could be removed from the rock, then when he realized they were leaving holes and destroying the rock, substituting aluminum chocks, which were easier to use and left the rock in as good condition as the climber found it.

He calls himself an innovator, rather than inventor.  He has improved existing products, but has never invented new ones.

He pioneered fleece, realizing that a fabric that would not hold water like wool would, but with wool's ability to retain heat would be lifesaving in winter.

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At first, although he was at the cutting edge of climbing technology, he made no money.  Gradually he began conducting his business according to conventional business models, expanding rapidly, piling up debt.  In the 1990s he came close to loosing his business. 

At this point, he first talked about leading an examined life. He began, with his colleagues, to examine their values and come up with a mission statement.

To make the best product.

To cause no unnecessary harm.  He said you can't create a product without creating more waste than the end product, and his goal was to minimize the harm his company did.

To work with friends, not other business people

To blur the distinction between work and play, play the work, work the play. 

To have flex time - surf when the surf came up.  His philosophy is, "I don't care when you work, I don't care how hard you work, I care about what you produce, so you figure it out."

He had gotten into trouble because he had been running his business like every other business.  The farmer has a responsibility to leave his land better than he found it.  There are rice patties that have been in use for thousands of years.  The forester is expected to care for the forest, but the sole mandate of the CEO of a corporation is to make money.  He wanted to make a business that would be here 100 yrs. from now, and in order to do that, he had to control growth. 

He got his company out of debt.  He makes more products when what he has made sells out.  

He hired a psychologist to come and do a study of his employees.  The conclusion was that his employees were not team players and would be unemployable anywhere else. He would need to lead by example.So he began teaching philosophy classes and the concepts he developed led to the book Let My People Go Surfing.

An important turning point was when his employees became sick.  He learned that the ventilation system was recycling the same air and that cotton is saturated with chemicals to reduce shrinking, and so on. The formaldehyde in the cotton was making them sick.   At this point them started an environmental assessment.

They asked, what's the best fiber?  The worst?  It seemed natural that cotton would be the best fiber, the worst would be synthetic. He learned that cotton utilizes 21% of all the pesticides in the world and it is grown on 3% of the agricultural land.  After the bolls have formed, defoliants are employed to make leaves drop so the mechanical pickers can operate.  No bugs ants, birds, or weeds, nothing but cotton in these areas, and the cancer rate is much higher than normal.

Cotton processing uses a lot of water.  This water ends up in ponds, where people are hired to operate cannons to keep the birds away so they will not become contaminated with the toxins and produce deficient offspring. 

It took him eighteen months to get out of using industrially grown cotton. There was no organic cotton at that time.  He had to give farmers loans to grow organic cotton because the banks wouldn't give loans.

The machines that processed cotton would need to be cleaned of toxins before they could be used to processed it for their use.  The organic cotton gathered without the use of exfoliants, had extra organic matter and the spinners did not work well with it.  He found a partner in Thailand who figured out the problems.  He froze the cotton so it could be used in the spinners.

Next they addressed the dyes.  There were no books to tell them about it. They found one company that made non-toxic dyes.

He likes hemp but it makes a difference where it is grown.  If it is grown in a cold area they leave it out and it rots leaving the fiber.  If it is grown in a warm area chemicals are used to harvest the fiber.

The next step was to clean up their own act.  They questioned every process and decided to take responsibility for their product from birth to earth.  They ask customers to give back any piece of Patagonia.  Synthetics go to Japan where they are taken down to the original polymer, which is 75% more efficient than making it new. They make jeans out of recycled cotton, fleece out of recycled wool, and are trying to learn how to recycle hemp.

There is no such thing as sustainability so they decided to tax themselves, taking 1% of sales and using it as an earth tax for being a polluter. They do this even if they are not turning a profit.  To them, it is the cost of doing business.  1,500 other companies are also doing the same thing. 

The money is used to support civil democracy. He believes more is happening with individuals and little towns than happened in Copenhagen and that the real causes of social problems are environmental.

The consumer is one who destroys, one who uses up. We are using up the resources of seven planets and we have to change.

He wants to show that green business is good business.

He believes the best fabric is hemp. It is the strongest fiber and won't wrinkle. It is grown without pesticides and has been banned because Dupont saw hemp as a threat.  Patagonia buys hemp from China.

There was a question and answer period.

He wants to have his products last forever. His jackets cost more on Ebay used than they do new.

Q - Is 1% enough?

A you'd be surprised how much it is. He said if you give $10 it is worth more than $100 in ten years, because the money goes to work right away.

The biggest givers are the poorest people.

$10 now is worth more than $100 in ten years.  It get to work riht away.

Q. What thinkers have influenced him.?

A. (this had already been mentioned - Emerson, Thoreau, John Muir,…) He said he is concerned about the health of the planet. Saving the planet is 19th on people's priorities.

Q. Is there a business model or are their business leaders who inspired him.  

A. No I don't have any I don't hang out with other businessmen.

Q. How to make sustainability a lasting way of life?

A. All of us have to lead an examined life.