DELIVER America 2025

“Fashion is a dirty business,” said Patagonia’s CSCO, Todd Soller, in a conversation with Deborah Dull at DELIVER conference last week.

He shared how the company moves beyond the industry’s superficial, “rubber-stamping” initiatives that still produce disposable products with toxic processes.

Patagonia implements an “environmental P&L,” a sustainability score they created. If that score isn’t positive for a product, they block its launch or production.

I’m well aware this is a level of operationalizing sustainability that not all companies have the “luxury” to do. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating to see how Patagonia is putting money where its mouth is.

Todd reported that a staggering 95% of Patagonia’s carbon footprint is Scope 3 (indirect emissions from transportation, fabric making, etc.). These are notoriously difficult to reduce because they’re outside a company’s direct control.

Here’s how they approach it:

• Clean up the supply base: Patagonia helps fund manufacturing partners’ transitions from coal and gas to renewables which requires large co-investments and long-term collaboration.
• Design for sustainability: They include the supply chain team in the product design process to understand each product’s footprint across its lifecycle. If a product is “too dirty,” they block the launch or redesign it, prioritizing durable products that “last a lifetime.”
• Own the lifecycle: The company operates the largest apparel-repair program (100,000+ repairs a year) and buys back items from customers for resale through a Worn Wear program.

What Patagonia demonstrates is that serious “sustainability” goes beyond the marketing department’s purview and touches every function within a company and, even more importantly, its entire ecosystem of suppliers, designers, and customers.

It’s not the only company doing this (Todd also called out partners such as Ellen Kapiloff @ Lacoste) but it remains one of the most prominent examples of making sustainability a core corporate value.

Originally posted by Philipp Gutheim on LinkedIn.