WHEN MALINDA AND I made the decision to stay in business, we faced a personal challenge: Could we run a company that does much good and very little harm? Could we turn the company into a model, capable of effecting reform that we as individuals would be unable to accomplish? Could we actually change the way others treat the natural world?

The Zen master would say if you want to change government, you have to aim at changing corporations, and if you want to change corporations, you first have to change the consumers. Whoa, wait a minute! The consumer? That's me. You mean I'm the one who has to change?

The original definition of consumer is "one who destroys or expends by use; devours, spends wastefully." It would take seven Earths to provide enough raw materials to allow the rest of the

The Zen master would say if you want to change government, you have to aim at changing corporations, and if you want to change corporations, you first have to change the consumers. Whoa, wait a minute! The consumer? That's me.

world to consume at the same rate Americans do. Ninety percent of what we buy in a mall ends up in the dump within 60 to 90 days. It's no wonder we're no longer called citizens but consumers. Our politicians and corporate leaders are fair reflections of who we've become.

When I look at my business, I realize one of the biggest challenges I have is combating complacency. If I say we're running Patagonia as if it's going to be here a hundred years from now, that doesn't mean we have a hundred years to get there! Our success and longevity lie in our ability to change quickly. Continuous innovation requires maintaining a sense of urgency—a tall order, especially in Patagonia's seemingly laid-back corporate culture. In fact, one of the biggest mandates I have for my managers is to instigate change. It's the only way we're going to survive in the long run.

The American dream is to own your own business and grow it as quickly as you can until you can cash out and retire to the golf courses of Leisure World. The business itself is really the product, and it doesn't matter whether you're selling shampoo or land mines. When the company becomes the fatted calf, it's sold for a profit, and its resources and holdings are often ravaged and broken apart, disrupting family ties and the long-term health of local economies. The notion of businesses as disposable entities carries over to all other elements of society.

When you get away from the idea that a company is disposable, all future decisions in the company are affected. The owners and the officers see that, since the company will outlive them, they have responsibilities beyond the bottom line. Perhaps they will even see themselves as stewards of the earth.

Patagonia will never be completely socially responsible. It will never make a totally sustainable, nondamaging product. But it is committed to trying. We simply don't have any other choice. As the late environmentalist David Brower once put it, "There's no business to be done on a dead planet."