The 5 R's -- Vincent Stanley of Patagonia

An overflowing recycling bin.

Is this something to be proud of?  

~~~

On Wednesday, Vincent Stanley, the VP of Marketing for Patagonia, addressed a standing room only crowd at the SXSW Eco Conference.  He was a calm speaker and focused his talk on Patagonia's advertisement, released on Black Friday in 2011:

Certainly against the norm, what Patagonia was trying to drive home with this ad was an awareness of how materialistic our society is today -- to encourage people to think about what they are buying before they make purchases.  The ad reinforces Patagonia's Common Threads Initiative to promote their 5 R's:

Reduce

Repair

Reuse

Recycle

Reimagine 

So, how does the overflowing recycling bin tie into all of this?  That recycling bin was full in just one week.  In one regard, it's impressive that my roommate and I were able to divert that much waste from the landfill and send it to the recycling facility to be repurposed.  But, think of all the energy that must go into using those products and then recycling them into something new.  No doubt, the full recycling bin is a step in the right direction, and certainly better than sending it all to the landfill.  

But, like many of my peers and fellow conference-goers at the SXSW Eco conference, I have this constant nagging to take my efforts a step further.  Seeing a full recycling bin like this would have been satisfying a year ago, but now I see it and think there is something wrong with the picture --  there has got to be more that I can do.  What if there was none of that waste in the first place?  No energy would have to go into the recycling truck coming to pick up recyclables.  No energy would have to go into sorting and reprocessing the material.  

So, maybe Patagonia's 5 R's are on to something.  Recycling used to be good enough for me.  Now, I can't help but think about the energy that goes into having process that material.  In this materialistic consumer-driven world,  Patagonia as a company is thriving even while promoting ads telling people not to buy their products.  Their book, The Responsible Company, promises an explanation.  Stay tuned :)

PS: Interesting Fact - Stanley reported that sales for the jacket in the ad stayed relatively steady one week after the ad was released.  The Patagonia team considered this a win.

:D