Not to pile on or anything, but The Piton posted an entry
questioning the TNF's motives for sponsoring Sundance, which received an irate comment (yes, hard to believe), which was in turn posted as a blog entry and commented on by a reader that also eloquently
criticized TNF's environmental leadership. Now I may not know much about TNF, though I do admire their
WWII fashion sense. But REI? Them I know. We're good friends and they love it when I remind them that they are far from the industry’s shining light of environmental leadership. In fact, you might call them the industry's dim bulb. Perhaps it's all the rain.
I won't rehash what I've written about before, but I will update some numbers. I
previously estimated that REI gave less than .3% ($2.5M of ~$1B in sales) of their revenues to environmental and community causes. It looks like they've since updated their
REI Gives page and increased this amount to about $6.5M: $2.5 to local communities, $4M to park restoration, and an unidentifiable amount to grants. The problem obviously is transparency since they do not break it out fully. I’m also guessing that much of the park restoration dollars come from forfeited member dividends, instead of straight out of sales. However you slice it, it doesn’t appear they give 1% or more. If they did, I’d expect they would be trumpeting this fact everywhere. Not to mention the fact that other organizations have given them very poor marks for
environmental issues like the use of recycled paper in their catalogs. So there you have it, a dim bulb. But dimmer than TNF's? I'd say yes. Not that anyone cares, or should care perhaps.
If you argue the classical Milton Friedman line, corporations
shouldn’t be in the business of diverting profit or revenue to
non-profit causes. Profit should be either reinvested or given back to
shareholders, who in turn can donate to the causes of their choice. A
reason, people argue, we have one of the largest private charity
sectors in the world. It’s the beauty of the American free-market
system where everything is for sale, and if it isn’t, it soon will be.
Everything including the environment.
But wait a minute, Uncle
Friedman is dead is he not? So lets not go around drudging up the
ghosts of old Nobel prize laureates. Agreed? Cool.
I’m glad we had this chat.
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It's exactly because nobody cares that you don't see discussion on the issue. Maybe nobody cares is a bit to extreme. People care a little, but nobody likes to talk politics, offline or online. Unless they’re a political blog, most blogs stay away from it. They even put it into their site missions – NO politics. Obviously I say fuck that, it’s all politics., especially in the outdoors. Let me say that again, ESPECIALLY IN THE OUTDOORS. If you hike on public lands, you’re automatically involved. You ski on public lands, you’re automatically involved. Sorry. Can’t separate it. Too convenient. Too easy. But again, so what. Wilderness will be little managed parcels in 100 years anyway. The world over. Not a bad thing, just different. Woah, I’m off on a tangent here. To your point about dialogue, when it comes to the environment, there are such an overwhelming number of issues, that it's just too much for people. I've blogged this before, but the Onion's liberal fatigue bit says it all http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30624 . The environment is important to people, as long as someone else is dealing with it.
