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It is very easy to be cynical about this subject. Cynical about what green or ethical claims companies are making, unconvinced that the consumer can really do anything about it and doubtful that any of it matters at all. But when you wear a jacket or a fleece, or rock boots or a harness, and that item has a logo on it as it inevitably does, you are stating to the world that you support the aims and ethos of this company. It may be interesting, therefore, to know what their aims and ethos actually are.
You may like to think that you choose to buy on the basis of product and product only, but only if you are genuinely very old school and blissfully ignorant of our commercialised society is this really true. Brands are essentially nothing more than a ménage of manipulative salesmen, and there are far more factors at play than just what they are making. From that lecture you went to see by a famous climber who also happens to be an ambassador of a brand, to the free poster you got in a magazine, brands are everywhere, telling us what tribe we belong to and seducing us with who we could be. It is almost disgustingly admirable how companies have persuaded society to pay for fantasy reflections of themselves.
But in the end this intricately symbiotic and really rather creepy relationship between brand and consumer comes down to one simple thing – the law of supply and demand. Companies sell things because you buy them. They layer on meaning and identity in the form of branding because you find it so attractive that you pay more for it and then stay loyal to it. But if you said instead that you wanted a beautifully tailored garment made by someone with highly valued skills, and you didn’t want it to be made out of a chemical that is so persistent in the environment that when you trek out to the remotest reaches of the planet you find it has beaten you there, if you stopped and said this to companies, then companies would have to listen to you, because the customer is always right.