When Greenswashing Backfires – Thank You North Face
thankyounorthface.com
thankyounorthface.com
1. He claims that the entire "outdoor" movement was created by Oil and Gas which I think we know is total BS. Humans have been exploring the outdoors long before oil and gas - hunting - exploring - etc.
2. While TNF does definitely produce a ton of crap (and is really not my favourite brand in general) there is just currently no better substitute performance wise for petroleum based products in many areas. You can make a lot out of natural materials but a nice and lightweight waterproof jacket is not really one of them.
3. The original founder of the TNF (now deceased) bought tons and tons of land throughout Chile for years that people thought was for malicious ends. It turned out to be, however, that they were instead intending to donate the land to create even more natural parks (which Chile already has a ton of). Not a small amount of land here - we are talking quite a bit.
The "outdoor industry" in general has pretty much all of the problems he lists and tons of companies don't do shit in reality to help the environment. Would I prefer for all of these companies to stop making so much VOLUME of product and instead focus on quality and longevity and for consumers to focus more on buying used and second hand products? Of course. But this doesn't seem intended to really focus on that at all and is just a hit piece specifically on TNF. Who is paying for this advertisement and what is their motivation?
Why not focus instead on the problems of the outdoor industry in general?
The highlight of this video:
> TNF has PROPANE fireplaces!!!!
It literally took more energy to stream this video on the internet than it did to heat a lounge with propane. Calm down now there buddy.
> but OCEAN PLASTICS!!!!
Ok, this is a good one. First, how often are you washing your fancy TNF jacket? Probably once a year, because you don't want to ruin the water proofing treatment.
The EPA, when they're not busy buying $5k office chairs, is actually doing good work updating requirements for Wastewater Treatment plant guidelines to tackle microplastics, but this again, misses major sources.
Actually looking at the quoted sources for most of the graphs only count developed countries. They miss third world areas where rivers are used for trash disposal.
This is an enormous amount of effort targeting a minor abuse of plastics. To the above poster's point: if anything, they should be ragging on them to make their products repairable.
I still subscribe to "buy once, buy quality", which is why I don't own anything TNF. I'm on my second zipper on my 5 year old Columbia, which I bought specifically because it looked like it could be easily replaced.
>1. He claims that the entire "outdoor" movement was created by Oil and Gas [...]
No, he says that outdoor experiences are made possible in big part thanks to Oil and Gas, because pretty much every product you bring with you comes from Oil and Gas. I agree with this.
>2. [...] there is just currently no better substitute performance wise for petroleum based products
He states this in the video, this is pretty much the basis of the argument he's presenting.
>3. The original founder of the TNF (now deceased) bought tons and tons of land throughout Chile
No one is talking about Douglas Tompkins ... I fail to see what's the point you're trying to make. TNF was sold on 2000, that was twenty two years ago. How are you trying to link this with "the original founder" of TNF? And how does that change anything? Please explain otherwise this is just weird.
>and is just a hit piece specifically on TNF
Yes, it's literally on the URL of the website and the video.
>Who is paying for this advertisement and what is their motivation?
Oil and Gas companies?
I actually enjoyed the video as I think it balances out things and sets the record straight on how all of these "green" brands actually have a HUGE environmental footprint that they kind of push under the rug whenever they can.
Per the site guidelines[1]:
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"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""
"Assume good faith."
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From July 2021 FYI
My parents were given, as a gift, a wool blanket in 1963, and it was on our beds when we were children, and I have it on my bed now. It’s durability is like something out of a science-fiction story, an incredible substance that can take decades of use without showing signs of wear. It is not frayed or ugly; it is still in good shape. Im almost baffled how it endured. Good wool is amazing.
In 1989 my mom bought me my first real backpack, a NorthFace. Over the next 32 years, I travelled all over with it. I hiked the Appalachian Trail with it. I hiked mountains in Colorado with it. I took it on bike trips. I took it all over Europe. The quality was amazing. Finally, the zippers gave out. I gave up on it last year.
I bought another NorthFace backpack. The quality is terrible. After 1 year it is showing signs of wear. Everything about it seems cheap and badly done. I am very disappointed to see the shift in quality in NorthFace over those 32 years.
Pity that you ditched it. I recently had zipper replaced at a clothing repair shop on my quality old trusted winter jacket.. thought it would be very expensive, but it was not.
As for your experience with the new North Face jacket. That is my experience too. Brands that were known for quality are now 'just brands' and that's what you pay for: the logo.
You just have to not mind “looking like a dad” when wearing it. Which I don’t, because I am.
Also, everyone has said TNF declined when VF took over: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VF_Corporation
There are also lots of other woven UHWMPE products (like cut resistant gloves), etc etc etc. While these are somewhat expensive now I do not see any reason why they have to be super pricey if production was scaled up significantly. Garments made of UHWMPE would be impressively durable and resistant to heat, cold, chemicals, and other environmental hazards. As far as I know noone has yet to make woven UHMWPE with fibers as small as we get from Nylon or Polyester but if that could be innovated it could be a big game changer.
Most of these companies still do produce the high quality stuff but it is priced high as well. Figuring out which products are which as the consumer can be tricky.
It makes a ton of sense to put the literal fire out now, and worry about what the effects of the plastics are when there is evidence of serious concern.
I find alcohol in my blood all the time, I understand the effects and manage it so it's never a problem. Alcohol in fetuses on the other hand is a well understood problem where no level is really tolerable.
So, back to plastics. I found https://earth.org/how-does-plastic-pollution-affect-humans/ offers some indication. But I would love to see better information from a non-biased source. I've a suspicion that earth.org is biased.
From the linked article, plastics are a problem but the pollution level is probably below the threshold of harm for most people. But it's also possible that the levels have increased over the past couple of years to the point that it is harmful.
If we think it causes cancer (*and have some evidence) then sure, but if it's just like ' hey this stuff is here' then I will continue to be more afraid of 'ecological collapse.'
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-laun...
Edit: Just to clarify - I'm not advocating for removing state autonomy when it comes to legal legislation - but I am advocating for adopting some national anti-slapp rules.
Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Butt
If they had just stuck to the name, "The South Butt," I genuinely believe they would have been fine. It is the inverted logo and "Never Stop Relaxing" that caused them to lose. Parody protections have always been curtailed for commercial competition.
> A lawsuit is just a tweet with a filing fee
And not specifically discussing the South Butt case. The idea that lawsuits are just tweets with a filing fee (i.e. a way to spend money in a public forum to try and promote your idea of what's right) translates almost directly to a SLAPP suit.
You are quite accurate about the specific South Butt case - but I was trying to be more general.
https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2019/11/26/vf-corp-c...
... a little something I like to refer to as: Ends disguised as means.
I mean, it's wrong, but in the too-educated direction, not the not-educated-enough direction.
This also seems similar to the actions of one of North Face's customers, Patagonia, when they stopped doing co-branding with some VC firms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558512 (2019).
But it's not like the oil and gas industry hasn't been caught lying a billion times before.
(Note that their less premium offerings available at Target and Walmart might use fibers derived from oil and gas. Their premium stuff does not.)
[1] https://www.thenorthface.com/shop/mens-jackets-vests/mens-ex...
Obviously, this doesn't mean the man from the video is right, but it's for plenty other reasons.
The point is that we don't want to be beholden to oil and gas going forward. Look at all the campaigns to put out misinformation about oil and gas by the Oil Majors (since the 1980s). Yes Oil and Gas is part of the economy and all of its various products, but let's not make it the lynchpin and let's decarbonize our energy systems.
Every time these guys (oil executives or proxies) open their mouths you really see how much they don't understand the landscape outside of oil and gas industry.
Also remember this a polished message, I'd be curious to see their backroom conversations...
Personally, I'd be in favor of banning plastics from garments as they are the single largest source of microplastic pollution and non-recyclable consumer goods on the market. But if you make plastic garments, you're part of the precipitate.
Buy maybe you don't burn tons of oil in cars and planes you can maken a shit ton of plastic jackets without spewing nearly as many greenhouse gasses.
Decarbonize doesn't mean we have to use 0 oil, it means we have to use way less.
North face still has plenty of cotton and wool options.
https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/recycled-polyester.h...
In the long run, there’s really no reason plastics can’t be made directly from recent organic matter. Starting with oil gives you an energetic boost, but if you’ve got clean energy to spare, in theory you don’t need it. In practice though, it’s hard and there is a long way to go.
It’s hard to imagine how one would get similar performance from non-plastic garments. Before plastic, top-notch outer wear was oiled cotton canvas. But you are right about microplastic pollution.
That process starts from a lower energy level than starting from methane or oil, and so overall its more expensive. We would have to be willing to commit to generating a "surplus" of carbon-free power (e.g. nuclear, wind, solar) to support that sort of manufacturing, but it would be possible.
Also, a great thing about running electrochemical processes off of a periodic energy source like solar or wind is that the economics are easy to load-shift -- you care about the aggregate work output, not the consistency of work output.
Perhaps we could have a referendum about it.
other than that i do not understand anything from this video
I consider my primary work to be in outdoor leadership. I've built my wardrobe around sustainable wool.
Gore is working toward more sustainable waterproof/breathable materials, and the manufacturer I buy GoreTex from, Kokatat, is committed to healthy watersheds because that is where their customers play.
When your playground is the rivers and oceans, you play downstream from nearly everyone.
They are moving very slowly and it's hard to see it as more than greenwashing.
Modern Gore-Tex is effectively unrepairable (anything more than a small neat cut) and therefore unsustainable. These days it's 2 or 3 layers of plastic glued/bonded together, with extra glue/bonding along the seams, extra glue/bonding on fasteners and maybe even extra glue/bonding to other fabrics. It uses techniques requiring sophisticated manufacturing processes, which cannot be replicated at home, and Gore makes it difficult to buy Gore-Tex by the metre as a consumer even if you wanted to. Don't even think about sourcing specialist zippers if they break.
Yes, the outer face fabric may have a limited recycled content which companies like to focus on, but, like paper manufacturing, performance materials generally require some virgin material.
It is also all soaked in chemicals to prevent it actually needing to be Gore-Tex, only recently has there been a modest effort to use alternatives which don't shed fluorocarbons in use - even though they have been available for some time.
It works fairly well, but that performance relies a great deal on it not being eco-friendly.
I agree that they could be doing a better job, as can we all.
Oil and Gas conglomerates actively colluded in fabricating fake science to descredit the impact of GHG. As well as withheld information from the public and governments on their own data showing severe projections on climate change. [0] [1]
This is short term profit at the cost of _literally_ Human Survival.
Considering that Climate Calamity will be the major threat to Human life in large chunks of the planet by the time my children come of age, it looks pretty demonic in my book.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_co...
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shell-grappled-wi...
https://themenhero.com/where-is-the-north-face-made/
Since sales are probably not that high in Vietnam/Bangaladesh etc., this requires a robust global shipping system to get product from factory to consumer (probably mostly in North America, Europe, Japan, but sales location isn't reported much). It's a safe bet that cost-of-shipping increases are more than made up for by cost-of-manufacturing decreases due to outsourcing.
As far as the raw materials going into nylon/polyester, yes those are petrochemicals but could be replaced by aerochemicals, i.e. direct capture of CO2 and conversion to butadiene, ethylene, etc. for feeding into synthetic fabric production. Such tech is currently expensive, but if all the oil & gas & coal on the planet suddenly vanished, we could still make nylon.
On the whole oil & gas issue, this article/podcast lays it out nicely. Apparently it's all about having consistent brand image management:
Have not heard much about aerochemicals but that certainly sounds interesting (although probably insanely expensive). Personally I think the realistic approach is to focus (currently) on making textiles that are extra durable for better longevity so that even if the original production method is not perfect we can at least keep using it indefinitely or get it resold on the used market.
Also, a couple things:
1.) North Face really really cares about image and marketing. In my opinion, there's nothing special to their product- it's all image. So, blocking O&G companies from branding their gear is somewhat understandable.
2.) They do use some eco-friendly material, and (supposedly, maybe) will have more responsibly sourced material coming by 2025 (not sure if they committed to this before, or after this debacle).
3.) It's funny to me that his best defense of oil and gas is "you live in an oil and gas society, so, gotcha!"
Tarzan had a house in London, an apartment in Paris, and a large estate in Africa. He also spent time with Jane's rich relatives in Baltimore and hung out with Hollywood stars in California (Yeah, Burroughs started to get more and more silly in the later books). I wouldn't mind living like Tarzan.
https://www.outsidebusinessjournal.com/issues/what-happens-w...
Fun fact, go to Santa Barbara CA and walk the beach, the blobs of oil that pop up occasionally are not from some man made catastrophe but naturally occurring oil that is seeping from the ground and washing up on the beaches. Try to get your head around that, a oil spill being a natural system of nature!
I think we need to wean off oil and gas and onto better and more efficient power systems but am glad I do not equate natural products as "evil".
The process would even be carbon negative, since plastics take a long time to decompose and release their embodied carbon.
Nobody is saying oil and gas is evil.
What is evil is profiting and pretending we don't need to change how we fuel our economy.
What we build our durable goods out of isn't in question.
This is one of those situations where I don't like anybody on either side, and just hope that the argument doesn't get too annoying before it goes away. I don't think oil and gas is evil (because it is amoral) but the industry certainly is destructive, both in its externalized costs, and in how it tries to prevent people from fixing the mess we've made together in order to sustain itself. The fashion industry is similar in that it depends on weaknesses in human nature, and both would happily ride our civilization into the grave rather than abandon their business models.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/fast-fashion-environmental-i...
I have a 17 year old jacket that I still use in the snow. But if all north face customers were like you and me they would be bankrupt.
The whole premise of these brands is fast fashion, every year, minimum of 4 collections, and millions of people throwing away good clothes to buy brand new shinny things.
Those are the customers they are making money on and that is where the carbon impact of fast fashion is.