Three years ago, Patagonia made “Earth” its only shareholder. Founder Yvon Chouinard and his family transferred ownership into two structures:

The Patagonia Purpose Trust holds all voting stock (about 2%) and exists solely to safeguard the company’s mission and values, ensuring its direction remains anchored in environmental responsibility. All non-voting stock (about 98%) is owned by the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit that receives all profits not reinvested in the business and uses those funds exclusively for environmental protection, conservation, and activism.

This week, the company released its 2025 Impact “Work in Progress” Report. It offers a refreshingly candid assessment of what it means to run a global company with a legal charter to save our home planet. For example, while they celebrate the 824 nonprofits received grants or in-kind support in FY25 from their 1% for Peace commitment, they also acknowledge that 85% of their products still lack an end-of-life solution.

Are they perfect? No, and that’s precisely the point.

"Profit has never been Patagonia’s goal, but money and how we run our company are two of the most effective tools we have to protect nature. We dedicated our business to saving the planet, but policy now openly benefits those who succeed by exploiting it. We are seeing what happens when extractive capitalism becomes government doctrine.

"The pursuit of short-term profit and mindless consumption are destroying the planet, and it is bad for most businesses. To put it into perspective, when Patagonia was founded in 1973, the average lifespan of an American company on the S&P 500 was around 30 years. Today, it’s less than 18. More companies are being bought up or hollowed out, and the population of billionaires is climbing. Entrepreneurial success went from building a durable business to selling it off to the highest bidder. It is not sustainable, yet it does not show signs of stopping any time soon. Coupled with an attack on science undoing decades’ worth of progress on climate change, any company interested in long-term survival should consider changing its primary purpose to saving our home planet—unless it has a way to make money on a dead one."

WEBPAGE: Work in Progress Report

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