In 2008, childhood friends Jeremy Rochette, Julien Durant, and Vincent Andre, who grew up skateboarding and snowboarding together in their hometown of Clermont-Ferrand, France, decided to launch a clothing company focused on environmental and social responsibility. Nevermind that they knew next to nothing about how to design and manufacture products. They could learn that. The trio called their brand Picture Organic, and from the beginning, they used entirely organic, recycled, or responsibly-sourced materials—their goal has always been to create new, technical fabrics from plant-based sources to reduce the reliance on petroleum-built materials.
Since Jake Burton started making snowboards in his barn in Vermont in 1977, Burton has always been ahead of the curve. “Disruption and leading innovation on the mountain has always been part of our DNA,” Burton’s co-CEO Donna Carpenter has said. They were the company that first urged ski resorts to allow snowboarders, that started making polyester baselayers from recycled plastics in the 2000s, and is now committed to making snowboards with wood cores from responsibly-harvested wood.
Patagonia’s very mission statement, which they rewrote in 2018 to be even more direct, is simple and to the point: “We’re in business to save our home planet.” What started as a climbing gear company founded by Yvon Chouinard in the 1970s has grown into arguably the most powerful and influential outdoor brand in the industry. Patagonia puts all of their weight into environmental causes.
When Icebreaker founder Jeremy Moon first tried on a merino wool shirt handed to him by a farmer in New Zealand, it wasn’t at all what he expected. “It felt soft and silky and incredibly comfortable—nothing like the itchy, heavy wool I wore as a kid,” Moon has written. “It was knitted from superfine merino wool shorn off the backs of the merino sheep at Pohenui Island.” It was the early ’90s and Moon, then 24 years old, had just finished a five-day sea kayaking trip wearing polyester fabrics, which, he says, felt sweaty and started to smell badly two days in. “I was shocked to find out that all synthetic outdoor fabrics—such as polyester and polypropylene—are made from plastic. It seemed crazy to escape into nature wearing a plastic bag,” he wrote. Wool, he figured was the solution.