Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia has announced that any profit not reinvested in his company will now go into a charitable trust to fund environmental campaigns in perpetuity. This is a company worth 3 billion USD (4.4 billion AUD ). I'm not sure what the criteria is for an organization to receive a dividend from the trust but assuming the bulk of the money will be put towards genuine concerns then that is a fairly sizeable donation to protecting the planet.
As is the case with almost everything though there are 2 ways of looking at this. There seems to be a large number of sceptics out there who think this is a blatant case of green washing simply for the benefit of the company. Personally I think the future of the enviroment is in the hands of people like Yvon Chouinard who have sufficient resources to make some real difference. If we wait for our political leaders to take any real action we're screwed.
I would like to believe that Patagonia are doing this for all the right reasons. Just wondering how others might see this ?