Outdoor Performance Design – The Key to a Sustainable Future?

Outdoor-gear companies are probably the key to proactively developing a more sustainable culture.

Why? Because outdoor-wear is probably one of the most influential drivers of environmental awareness. Encouraging consumers to enjoy nature and appreciate its importance.

Outdoor brands not only merge fashion and function, but also provide us with armour against the elements, suggestive advertising, the inspiration and confidence to explore the trail, river, or ocean.

Just like a surfer values clean water and a trail runner values green forests, those and countless other outdoor activities can provide the incentives to make lifestyle choices with lower environmental impact.

Via Barbara de Vries, Plastic is Forever Facebook Page

Although most outdoor clothing and footwear is still far from being sustainable, heading out too meet nature today will encourage us to make more environmentally friendly choices tomorrow. To nurture and protect the natural environment that we have learned to love.

Have I been drinking too much Kool-Aid? I don’t think so. Outdoor culture can benefit us in many different ways.

For example living in the outdoors also helps you to understand how to make do with less. Learning that too much gear weighs you down and how to appreciating the essential items. The same is also true about life and a sustainable future.

The more we can promote experiencing the outdoors and design for it, the better it will be for us. Because if you don’t know nature, you can’t know that its worth preserving.

Besides whether surfing or hiking, it doesn’t get much better than practicing a sport, or pursuit that takes you into nature.

Potentially making outdoor-gear companies the most effective ambassadors for environmentally sustainable design and living.

“I love the idea of adapting myself to a situation rather than buying a lot of stuff”. – Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia

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