Environmental hypocrisy is nothing new when it comes to politicians and celebrities. Green extremist Al Gore is a hypocritical fraud who famously refuses to practice what he preaches. The former vice president’s Nashville-area house devours 21 times more electricity per year than the typical home in the United States, according to records from the Nashville Electric Service.
Gore isn’t alone. Prince Harry was caught taking a private jet to a Google climate change conference in Sicily last year. Singer Katy Perry, who has appeared in several UNICEF films aimed at combating climate change, traveled to the same conference via a diesel-powered superyacht.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio maintains his own environmental charity, but he allegedly couldn’t resist flying in a private jet to a recent festival at which he denounced climate change skeptics.
These examples of “good for thee, but not for me” insincerity are outrageous and disgusting. But as bad as they are, a famous outdoor recreational apparel company has them beat by any measure of environmental hypocrisy.
The North Face has managed to make millions by billing itself as an environmentally conscious eco-friendly company. It even went so far as to refuse to sell clothes to a small business in the oil and gas industry. In reality, however, its business is predicated on selling clothes, shoes, and outdoor gear made of petroleum-based synthetic materials and then shipping those products around the world on fuel-guzzling ships and airplanes.
Earlier this month, it turned into the Grinch for Innovex Downhole Solutions, a West Texas oil- and gas-well developer. Innovex wanted to buy 400 North Face jackets customized with the company’s logo as a Christmas present for its employees. The North Face, however, would not sell the jackets to the small business, even though Innovex had previously purchased clothing directly from the company in the past without issue.
The outdoor-clothing giant claimed Innovex did not meet the clothing maker’s brand standards.
“North Face would not sell us the jackets because we [are] an oil and gas company,” wrote Innovex CEO Adam Anderson in an open letter to The North Face’s parent company, VF Corporation.
As Anderson points out in his letter, “The irony … is your jackets are made from the oil and gas products the hardworking men and women of our energy produce.”
The North Face, like most clothing makers, depends on fossil fuels. About two-thirds of clothing is made from synthetic materials derived from fossil fuels. The use of synthetic fibers has doubled over the past 20 years, and synthetics are particularly popular in recreational gear such as that made by The North Face.
But The North Face’s environmental hypocrisy goes far beyond peddling pricey parkas, hiking boots, and backpacks that happen to be made largely of the very materials whose extraction it publicly opposes.
Last year, VF Corporation purchased land at Centennial Airport outside of Denver to build a 53,000 square foot private jet hangar. Apparently, The North Face’s parent company needed ample storage space for its fleet of private airplanes used to shuttle executives across the globe.
The fashion and garment industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions. And an Ellen MacArthur Foundation study, funded in part by The North Face, found that 20% of the world’s industrial water pollution is attributable to the dyeing and treatment of textiles.
It’s also concerning that VF Corporation maintains factories in Asian countries with few environmental regulations or worker protections, including China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and India. Not only does shipping products from these far-flung places to the U.S. create additional petroleum consumption from the use of planes and cargo ships, but VF Corporation has also been linked to exploited workers in dangerous working conditions.
In 2017, the Guardian reported that more than 500 workers collapsed from exhaustion during the prior year in Cambodian factories that produced clothing for VF Corporation, among other sportswear brands. Over one three-day period, 360 workers fainted. The report noted that the workers, who were mostly women, were subjected to 10-hour shifts, six days a week, in temperatures that often exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
VF Corporation refused to sign documents committing the company to improving and monitoring its labor practices. VF Corporation may have cleaned up its act some since, but the company still only earned a “C” grade for auditing and a “D+” for worker empowerment in the 2019 Ethical Fashion Report.
Just this year, the company sought to renege on purchase contracts in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and only paid its debt following intense public criticism.
It’s stunning that The North Face has the gall to condemn the U.S. oil and gas industry. U.S. energy producers are responsible for about 10 million well-paying jobs, while The North Face has been connected with abusive labor practices and sweatshops.
The North Face is built on a lie. The company may fund environmental charities and lobby Congress to tackle climate change, but the reality is that The North Face has built its company on the back of fossil fuels.
Rather than snubbing a successful small business in a pathetic attempt to kowtow to environmentally conscious consumers, The North Face should take a long, hard look at its embarrassingly hypocritical climate change-shaming behavior.
Drew Johnson is a government watchdog and energy policy expert who used public records to reveal Al Gore’s hypocritical home energy consumption. He serves as a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
