A few months ago, I realised there was a Patagonia-shaped hole in my Sustainability knowledge. Not the southern region of South America, of course, but the outdoor clothing company which has a reputation as something of a Sustainability maverick in the mould of its founder Yvon Chouinard. So I got hold of a copy of Chouinard’s book Let my people go surfing: the education of a reluctant businessman – originally published in 2005 and updated in 2016 – and I dug in.

The book is split into two sections: History and Philosophy. The History section was by far my favourite. Chouinard has a lovely faux-naive Kurt Vonnegut-esque writing style and I found myself going on way beyond my normal lights-out time both nights I was reading it. In particular, his description in a couple of dispassionate sentences of a climbing accident that killed one companion and badly injured another was like a spear in the chest that any embellishment would have diluted.

The reluctant businessman theme is basically about how Chouinard kept realising that various ‘standard’ pieces of climbing equipment or clothing were rubbish and that a bit of lateral thinking and doing (eg rescuing an old English corduroy mill to make shorts, selling rugby shirts as rugged climbing tops etc) could produce much better results. ‘Better’ gradually began incorporating environmental and social concerns – why shouldn’t all cotton be organic? Why shouldn’t clothes be long lasting and repairable? Why shouldn’t employees be free to go surfing when the conditions were right?

The Philosophy section I found less successful, quite possibly because the narrative in History was so powerful (showing once again how stories are great for communicating the environmental message). To me it was a little rambling in places, diverting into, for example, removing plastic liners from waste bins when I wanted to know more about Patagonia’s pioneering use of recycled plastics to make fleeces. Other pressing issues, such as the problem of microfibres from washing said fleeces, were absent, possibly due to the book’s 2005 origins. I may be wrong about these things, but there was no index to help me double check.

It has to be said the book looks gorgeous with naturally photogenic people out doing naturally outdoorsy stuff for real, that made me desperate for our wet Spring weather to improve so I could get out there myself, if somewhat less photogenically. So a lovely, inspiring book on thinking differently about business, but perhaps lacking a teensy bit of detail and structure for the eco-geeks amongst us in the Philosophy section.

Overall: Highly recommended for its maverick nature.