The North Face Rejects Making Clothing for an Oil and Gas Company, Is Clueless Concerning the Source of Their Products
In the news today is a hilarious case of lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy coming from The North Face, a popular outdoor clothing company. The North Face refused to make jackets for an oil and gas firm, saying the company’s products “didn’t align with its brand standards.” This shows an amazing lack of awareness because their outdoor wear fabrics are almost entirely created from oil.
Synthetic fabrics, for instance, acetate, acrylic, nylon, polyester, and spandex are all made from petroleum. In fact, a whopping two-thirds of our clothing is made from petroleum derived synthetic fibers.
The North Face’s faux pas started last year when the company refused to manufacture jackets for Texas oil and gas company, Innovex Downhole Solutions. Innovex was looking for a Christmas gift for its employees. In December 2020, they ordered jackets with an Innovex logo from The North Face, as they had done previously.
According to Innovex CEO Adam Anderson:
“They told us we did not meet their brand standards,” Anderson said. “We were separately informed that what that really meant is was that we were an oil and gas company.”
The North Face’s rank hypocrisy has been called out in a short video by Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services:
“I went through North Face’s website of wide-ranging products, and I failed to find a single product that wasn’t made out of oil and gas,” Wright says in the video. “The great majority of North Face’s products, jackets, backpacks, outdoor pants, shirts, shoes, hats, etc. are predominantly made out of the oil and gas that we so proudly produce.”
Wright points out approximately 60 percent of clothing produced globally is made using oil and gas. In The North Face’s case the number is likely 90 percent or more due to the fact that outdoor clothing is heavily dependent on synthetic fabrics for water resistance, breathability, and insulation.
Petrochemicals are also used to make backpacks, climbing ropes, hydration bottles, and other The North Face products, Wright says. Additionally, oil and gas powers factories that manufacture The North Face’s products, and the ships, trucks, planes, and trains used to ship their products worldwide use oil and gas for fuel.
“North Face is not only an extraordinary customer of the oil and gas industry,” Wright says. “They are also a partner in the oil and gas industry.”
In fact, on March 4th, North Face received an award for being an “Oil & Gas Extraordinary Customer” by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.
In a letter penned to North Face, which has gone viral, Innovex CEO Adam Anderson said this:
“The irony in this statement is your jackets are made from the oil and gas products the hardworking men and women of our industry produce. I think this stance by your company is counterproductive virtue signaling, and I would appreciate you re-considering this stance. We should be celebrating the benefits of what oil and gas do to enable the outdoors lifestyle your brands embrace. Without Oil and Gas there would be no market for nor ability to create the products your company sells.”
The North Face is either clueless about how the fabrics they use are made, or the company wanted to virtue signal to its nature loving customers hoping they wouldn’t realize that the clothing that they wear is created from petroleum.
In either case, it is turning into a major public relations fiasco for The North Face. This case provides a lesson for other companies considering embracing climate alarmism. Companies living in petroleum-based houses, shouldn’t start flame wars.
Victorian dictator and friend of China, Premier Dan Andrews, seems to be surgically bonded to his North Face jacket.
Guess he must be more pro oil then he lets on.
on his wage he can afford their stuff
figures don’t lie (northface depending on oil for their wellbeing)…. but liars figure (northface being woke without thinking smarter people will call them out)…. now if only the woke mob would listen
Two Faced…..
The level of fundamental stupidity is amazing. ‘Bite the hand that feeds you’ much?
I absolutely love when the pompous virtue signalling crowd bite themselves in their virtuous asses. It makes my heart soar.
They’re virtue signalling. Just search on Google Images for North Face.
See any Chris Bonningtons there?
now THAT…IS FUNNY !!!!
roflmao
Pretty much, if you go walking in the UK. These days, even on the harder inclines and trails, it seems not to be so much a chance at exercise and opportunity to spend some time in the outdoors and in admiring the mountainous prospects. Nope, these days, hill walking, it seems to be a darned fashion parade.
Me, my mates we/ I wear suitable equipment and some branded stuff but much less conspicuous and what works fits for me, and if your going up high, layers and preferably no synthetics by the skin, good boots a must, absolute necessity, rainwear too.
If you peruse old photos of Mallory and Irvine’s 1924 attempt on Everest, there wasn’t too much Berghaus and North Face togs about, mmm, and how sustainable…… Those blokes were as hard as granite and the clothes, well you’d see them walking clad on people in Kendal on a 1924 market day, tweed, perhaps plus fours, wool cardi’s aplenty and stout leather boots.
By all means buy branded gear, just don’t pretend that you’re going up K2 and the other thing, North Face are a snowflake brand fantastic geek gear (brian cox has some) and all. Thus, do you expect cogent sentences…. let alone, an awareness founded in un – common sense?
Why no synthetics by the skin? Just curious, since synthetics generally have good “wicking” properties to keep moisture from collecting against the body and chilling it, like for example, cotton will.
Good question, I find them uncomfortable but I do not deny their efficacy it’s just a personal aversion, very fine wool is best for me.
Some have suggest “The Red Face”
Other possibilities:
“The Egg On Face”
“The Cutting Off Your Nose To Spite Your Face … Face”
“The Cheek”
“Jacket Gate”
It is a joy to see people standing up to the Woke abyss of infinite lunacy. It is a testament to how Gad Saad prescribes to deal with these idiots: i.e. ridicule and satire are far more powerful and effective than arcane logical or mathematical arguments.
As Gad Saad says, “be your inner honey badger” and stand up to these lunatics! Drown them in a tsunami of their own woke idiocy! Politely of course – but precisely as this person has done to ridicule The North Face….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BKOZi-oo4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QFu1GedeUg
If North Face is so anti-oil, maybe the oil companies should stop selling them their products…
Yeah let’s see how many waterproof garments they can make without Gore-Tex and polyester shells!
All the world’s a stage….for greenwashing positioning statements.
World Needs Congo Copper to Kick Fossil Fuels, Billionaire Says (yahoo.com)
And all this from a firm that probably supports those who demand a small bakery bake wedding cakes for whomever wants them to.
Yep, Will for SURE never order from these idiots! Ha!
Thanks for clearing this up for us!
Cheers,
Ele
Perhaps they could try more green recycled materials and get off fossil fuels?
Ravenous rodent destroys interior of Land Rover after overnight visit to Hunter Valley – ABC News
Rats eat through your car wiring? Here’s why it’s happening (freep.com)
…and change their name to Red Face.
Any of your favorite politicians shown wearing NF gear? google images may be your friend.
Getting politicians to repudiate the wearing of the woke companies gear could be a win win.
Appears that North Face should be added to the list of companies being sued for adding to the global warming, Like the Exxon law suits, for their ongoing, systematic campaign of lies and deception to hide from the public what North Face has known for decades—that making clothes from fossil fuels undeniably contributes to climate change.