Pressure builds on sustainability activist Kelly Slater to gift Outerknown to environmental causes following Yves Chouinard’s shock decision to give away his $3 billion surf and climbing company Patagonia, “I was in Forbes magazine listed as a billionaire, which really, really pissed me off”

"The whole river is completely filled with floating fish, for miles and miles and miles. I have seen pictures and it makes me wanna cry," says Slater.

You might’ve seen in the press already, Yvon Chouinard’s decision to give away Patagonia, the company he spent the last fifty years building into the multi-billion dollar operation it is today. 

I’ll admit. Patagonia, the brand, don’t do a hell of a lot for me. The ritual use of dull browns, the lingering smell of piety, the full silhouettes suited to the fashionably retarded.

I live in the city where the climate is temperate. I don’t climb, don’t fish, use a little of the ocean close to shore and what little nature I get is from the television. Fornication, perhaps, is the closest I get to God.

And, yet, I’ve always found Yvon Chouinard, the climber and surfer who founded Patagonia, deeply interesting. One of those men whom you would’ve loved as a childhood mentor. 

“He who dies with the least toys wins,” says Yvon. “Because the more you know, the less you need… I was in Forbes magazine listed as a billionaire, which really, really pissed me off. I don’t have $1 billion in the bank. I don’t drive Lexuses.”

True to his word, instead of selling Patagonia or taking it public, Yvon, who is eighty-three, has transferred his family’s ownership of the company into a trust and no-for-profit, “created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.”

And, now following the decision, pressure is mounting on renowned environmentalist Kelly Slater, whose work with Queensland wetlands and Californian deserts is the stuff of legend, to do the same with Outerknown, which, like Patagonia, was created as a bulwark against cheap, mass-produced clothing. 

“I am pretty depressed about the state of the world to be honest and our future in terms of pollution and humanity in a lot of ways,” Slater told Tracks magazine. “It feels like politics and religion and all sorts of things are pulling us apart more than they bring us together.

“I am pretty sensitive to it … it weighs heavy on my heart to be honest. I think about big things in the world a lot and for me it’s difficult to see and be ok with it. When you become aware of something but then you don’t know how to fix it, that’s when it becomes frustrating.

“I try and raise awareness with social media. I wish there was more time for myself to be able to just focus only on that. All the rivers in my hometown right now have completely been destroyed by the sugar cane and fertilizer industries. All the fish in the river outside my house just died, every single fish. The whole river is completely filled with floating fish right now, for miles and miles and miles. It’s the saddest thing you will ever see. I have just seen pictures and it makes me wanna cry.”

Don’t cry!

Be like Yvon!

More as it comes.