Hacker News Reader

Comment by subsubzero | Hacker News Reader

Despite some of my issues with the company, they have a few really cool environmentally friendly programs. The "worn well" program is incredible, basically if you have a piece of patagonia clothing and return it through that program, they clean it up or recycle it and you get a free credit towards anything patagonia sells.

For kids clothes this is a boon, I would buy my daughter a patagonia jacket from the patagonia outlet at 40% off, she grows out if it and I trade it in for a new jacket and get $20-$30 off of the new jacket. Her old jacket gets cleaned and sold to some other kid who can use it(they have a worn well portal where you can buy used gear), great for peoples pocketbooks, great for the environment - win all around.

View on HN

Yeah, I don't agree with 100% of their political positions (though, to be fair, it is rare that I agree with 100% of anyone's political positions, including my own), but they are really trying to change the way people consume their products. And, many of their products are truly built to last. I have two jackets (one insulated, one a fleece) that are 15+ years old and have been dragged through the dirt, mud, rain, and snow all over the U.S.

> it is rare that I agree with 100% of anyone's political positions, including my own

This is my favorite political comment of the year!

I hope you won't mind my stealing it when one of my friends is shocked that we disagree on some political position or another.

Ha! I was just about to comment saying the same thing! I like it a whole lot :)

Do you 100% agree with that statement? It can be seen as political.

> though, to be fair, it is rare that I agree with 100% of anyone's political positions, including my own

Finally something I can almost totally agree with!

Right now I'm wearing a pair of their twill jeans I've had for nearly 20 years now. There's a tiny bit of pilling in the knees you can only see close up. Otherwise they look brand new every time they come out of the wash.

A lot of their stuff isn't to my style, but I've had really solid luck with the stuff that is. I've got multiple pairs of long underwear and down vests and such from back when I snowboarded a lot, again, all of them held up really well.

Long time HN reader, never signed up, until today.

It's humbling and refreshing to see someone disagreeing and acknowledging that it doesn't mean that they're right and the other side is wrong, and that it's ok to like 99% of someone else's agenda (my interpretation) without starting an I'm better than you campaign.

More of us should follow that line of thought, love your comment man!

H&M will give you credit for bring clothing of any kind. AFAICT both are just a way to get you into the store so you'll buy more stuff

https://www2.hm.com/en_ca/sustainability-at-hm/our-work/clos...

What matters is what happens to the used clothes. Patagonia resells them to consumers.

So does H&M

> the boxes and sorts the contents into three categories:

> Rewear: Wearable clothes are marketed as secondhand clothing.

> Reuse: If the clothes or textiles are not suitable for rewear, they’re turned into other products, such as remake collections or cleaning cloths.

> Recycle: All other clothes and textiles are shredded into textile fibers and used to make, for example, insulation materials.

The "Rewear" category is reselling the clothing.

I'm not sure how much of H&M clothes are really collected after use, but at least they have invested in a company that works on recycling fibers from clothes. They own over 10% of it. Probably some of what they collect goes to this Renewcell company for recycling.

https://www.renewcell.com/en/

They’re being sued for misleading statements about their sustainability: https://www.thefashionlaw.com/hm-is-being-sued-over-misleadi...

Don’t fall for their narrative.

I happen to know someone who works in a H&M store. They throw out any returned items even if they haven't been worn once. It's cheaper than having to put the work into sorting them.

There is often a disconnect between management and lower levels. I suspect the store would probably get in trouble for this behaviour.

Not least because it opens the company up to fines for false advertising (e.g. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission regularly polices companies operating in Australia, which H&M does)

Employees perform the behaviors you incentivize. H&M can have an official policy that disagrees, but if their employees are incentivized not to comply, then they won't, and that's H&M's fault.

See also: Wells Fargo; Amazon

Oh Agreed. A systems problem.

A former company that I worked for wanted their customers (Real Estate Agents) to fill out profiles. They wanted the account managers to encourage this behaviour so they tied the bonus/commission to having it filled out.

Needless to say, the customers had very little interest in filling out the profiles. I found all the account managers sitting around a table at a conference filling them out themselves instead of talking to the customers (as they should have been at the event).

A few even discovered they could fill the fields with '.' characters and game the system (they got caught and fired for crossing the line). The others just wasted valuable time they could have been selling products and got their bonuses.

Ah that's a good point.

Though on consideration, I would venture a guess that the purpose of each program might be as different as the governance of each company. Outcomes might be comparable, but I'd bet the arrival path and conversations were very divergent. Judging from this stark choice they've made in this post, the people at Patagonia are clearly thinking VERY differently than most boring and very profitable companies, and I presume that's not skin-deep.

And if so, maybe it's selling one short to glom them together in assessment, based mainly on outcomes instead of routes? I dunno, I could see someone defending either way of looking at it -- focussing on sameness because outcome's are the same, or differentness because paths to decisions differ :)

Used Patagonia gear for kids (if you can afford it) is incredible. You know they’ll be dry and comfortable, it wears remarkably well, and it has resale value. All of my kids have cycled through Patagonia garments and each garment was sold eventually, bringing the cost of ownership well below what we’d pay if we bought them worse gear new.

It’s unfortunate that price prevents people from wanting or being able to invest in quality clothing that can last. If something is well made it seems like it can outlast cheaper garments several times over, and the environmental cost is reduced dramatically. Most garments like this really do cost a lot though; my nano puff hoody was around $350 CAD, for example. You can get stuff that looks the same for $50-$100. If I hadn’t experienced how nice it is first hand, I’d likely assume the nano is a waste of money and go with something cheaper too. Then of course at times in my life I couldn’t spend that much if I wanted to.

We have a bit of a crisis regardless. The garment industry is like a massive conveyor belt into landfills.

I can confirm, we have many Patagonia piles which are 30 years old now and they look brand new, passed from dad to me.

Also some t shirts from the 90 are still looking good, which is kinda incredible.

Levi's has the same kind of thing for secondhand and vintage denim jeans and jackets: https://www.secondhand.levi.com/

> get $20-$30 off of the new jacket

would you also get $20-30 off of a used jacket?

Yes "If you have an old Patagonia item that is just sitting around, we’ll give you credit towards your next purchase on a used or new garment." https://wornwear.patagonia.com/

Better question is could you sell your old jacked for more than $20-30?

The problem with this argument is that it requires a good deal more effort than dropping off a garment. I have to list it somewhere and deal with inquiries and postage. How often to garments get thrown out because people don't have the time or interest in going through this process.

Personally, I end up donating many items to avoid the need to deal with eBay/Gumtree (Australia/UK marketplace).

Yeah I had a jacket that had worn through, and sent it back to them for repair for free. Brilliant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com