It’s important to note: this back-handed aphorism isn’t one we use cavalierly. In fact, it’s actually an indelible part of our history. Way back before nau was nau, when we were merely a zygote, a Michael Franti t-shirt caught the eye of our founder. In three words, its bold, unapologetic message perfectly captured the idea behind his radically new business model—or more appropriately deemed—his UNbusiness model. His idea: to create a venture that would undo and unravel the damage that traditional businesses have caused the environment and be the first major apparel company built on sustainability.

He borrowed the axiom and distilled it into a single acronym—UTW—which later became the initial name of our fledging company and has since become (and will always be) our modus operandi. So with that said….

It’s no surprise: our resolution is the same resolution we’ve had since we started—to unfuck the world. Some people might think it’s too lofty, a bit audacious, maybe even haughty. But if we stick to miniscule goals and understated intentions then that’s all we’ll ever accomplish. And we’re fairly certain great ideas weren’t built on losing five pounds in a year or drinking one less cup of coffee a day.

Not to demean personal goals, but we tend to believe that people underestimate their own ability to surprise themselves. So they aim low and take it slow hoping that if they make it to the gym three times a week, they’ve reached their yearly potential. But we can do more, so much more.

Just look at some of the Provocateurs we featured last year. Sean Carasso invented a business model to end a war. His nonprofit, Falling Whistles, helps educate the masses and mobilize Peace forces in the Congo—all by selling whistles. Allison Arieff, former editor of Dwell magazine and current blogger for the NY Times is changing the way we think about sustainable design. And Drummond Lawson—part chemist, part wizard—gleans inspiration from natural ecosystems and blends it with science to create cleaning solutions that even mother nature would use.

Of course, they all have one thing in common—they dream big. They don’t just THINK it’s possible to unfuck the world, they KNOW it’s possible. And we do too. We don’t just want to design clothes that work well and feel good and tread lighter on the earth, we want to change the way an industry does business. Yeah, it’s lofty. It’s far-reaching. But we believe it’s possible. And that’s all that matters.

We love a good explosion every now and then, especially if it means creating a few dozen of miles of new habitat for spawning salmon and steelhead. That’s exactly what happened last week when a team of engineers blasted a giant hole in the century-old Condit Dam, sending a massive wall of water and sediment tumbling toward the Columbia River and carving out new life for the White Salmon River.

It was the third largest dam removal in the country, and our good friend and filmmaker Andy Maser was there doing what he does best— capturing a historic moment on film. He shot over eight hours of footage from multiple viewpoints and distilled it into two minutes of video and time-lapse photography.

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For Andy and anyone who loves to see nature triumph, the dam removal marked the end of an old way of thinking and the ushering in of something far better—a respect for the natural order of things (not to mention, a few dozen miles of new whitewater).

As Andy so aptly said, “We’ve reached a turning point. More dams are coming out in the US than going in. Dam removal is no longer a mark of failure, it is a mark of success. As a country, we were founded on new ideas and innovation, and we should feel proud that we have had the foresight and courage to set these rivers free.”

To see more of Andy’s work, head to Andymaser.com.

We love Forest Park; it’s 5100 acres of biking, hiking, walking, running—a few of our favorite things. So last Friday, we were excited to get out of the office and give it some love with the rest of the Backyard Collective. We headed up Ridge Trail with the Conservation Alliance and a few other cool companies in Portland to build turnpikes, pull ivy and put in some hard work for a place we love. Here are few photos from our day in one of our favorite backyard parks.

©Daniel Sharp

Last month in The Thought Kitchen, we sat down with Jamie Bainbridge, our Director of Textile Development and Sustainability, to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Eco Index—a collaborative effort to create an industry-wide standard in sustainability. This month, we’re taking a deeper dive into the nitty gritty details of this innovative tool and putting our Men’s Vice Blazer to the test. Find out what we learned and how it’s going to change the way we do business.

How It Works: The Cliffs Notes Version
Building a tool that assesses the environmental impact of thousands of products produced by hundreds of companies is challenging, and some might even say, downright impossible. That’s why the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) built the Eco Index as a three-tiered system, so that any company, no matter how small or large, can evaluate their business piece-by-piece.

All three levels—guidelines, indicators and metrics—allow companies to evaluate their products based on two crucial elements: lifecycle stages such as packaging, transportation and materials; and impact such as the use of waste, water and other resources.

The first level—guidelines—is merely a set of recommendations that companies can use to lessen their impact: use more recycled content, minimize packaging, institute end-of-life design policies, etc… The second level—indicators—gets a bit more technical and even incorporates a scoring system that allows companies to assign points (we’ll take a closer look at indicators when we evaluate the Vice Blazer). And finally, the third tier—metrics—requires lots of number crunching and accounting that assigns values to each indicator. Confusing? Yes. Effective? We’ll see.

To get a better grasp on the set-up, think of it like this: guidelines ask what am I doing?, indicators ask how am I doing?, and metrics ask how much am I doing? But despite their qualitative and quantitative differences, every level is designed with the same goal in mind: to increase the transparency of the supply chain and lower the environmental footprint.

©Daniel Sharp

Sizing up the Vice Blazer: Materials and End of Life
So what does all of this mean for a company like Nau? To start, we can use the Eco Index indicators to evaluate each of our products. Take the Vice Blazer, for example. We picked three sample indicators to size up its environmental footprint and here’s what we learned:

1 Recycled Content
For this indicator, the Eco Index assigns points based on the percentage of recycled content that is used in the product (1 point for 10-24%, 2 points for 25-49%, etc…). But keep in mind, all scoring is merely an internal gauge of a company’s sustainability practices and, in no way, reflects a standardized ranking system (yet). Since the Vice Blazer is designed with 80% recycled polyester, we feel like we’re pulling our weight in this category. However, we still keep an eye on technology to see if more improvements can be made.

2 Renewable Content
In order to produce the premium quality of the fabric in the Vice Blazer, we added 20% certified organic cotton which reduces the use of pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals. It also gives recycled polyester the smooth, soft feel of cotton.

3 Designed for End of Life
We designed the Vice Blazer to be recycled at the end of its long life, including the labels which are composed of recycled polyester. However, there are two components that could be improved based on this indicator: the back zipper and the cotton content which are both unable to be recycled at this time.

Even though organic cotton is a renewable resource, it is considered a non-polyester “contaminant” and is, therefore, dissolved through the recycling process. In the end, we are throwing away 20% of the garment even though 80% is being recycled and reused.

This begs the question: do we sacrifice the soft quality of organic cotton to produce a completely100% recycled blazer? Or do we include cotton, a renewable resource to create a more premium garment that looks and feels better to the consumer?

These are the design and sustainability questions we face every day as a company dedicated to creating beautiful performance products that balance the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. And with the launch of the Eco Index’s pilot program in September, these are the tough questions every apparel company will have to answer in creating more sustainable and transparent product and supply chains. However, one, lingering question remains: will it actually work?

Stay tuned: In part three of our three-part-series, we’ll explore the inaugural launch of the Eco Index pilot program and find out if it will actually live up to the hype.

Practicing the Pop-Up

Our friends at Warm Current have combined three of our favorite things—surfing, sustainability and giving back—and created an ingenious non-profit that helps underserved kids learn how to surf. For the past three years, they’ve collected tired, old wetsuits and surfboards, polished them up, and used the gear to outfit kid’s surf camps across the Pacific Northwest, Peru, Mexico and Morocco.

Now, for the first time, they’ve launched a brilliant fundraising campaign, The Faces of Warm Current, that will help spread the love of surfing and the outdoors to kids that would otherwise go without.

This is how it works: From now until July 31^st, you can donate a mere five bucks and purchase a square containing a message or photo that will become part of a giant mosaic on the side of the kid’s surf camp trailer. The money will be used to buy new kid’s surfboards, new wetsuits and a trailer that will tour up and down the West Coast.

Even if you’ve never ridden a wave, this is a cause to get on board with. Break out your old wetsuit and send it their way. Teach a lesson. Donate a five spot (or more). And if you haven’t done so already, check out their website: Warmcurrent.org.

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vimeo Direkt

This week in The Thought Kitchen, we sit down with Jamie, our Director of Textile Development and Sustainability, to get the inside scoop on her collaborative efforts on the Eco Index, a new tool that will take the BS out of “green” and set an industry-wide standard in sustainability. For Nau, it will give us—and many other companies—a deeper understanding of our environmental impact and how we can make it better. Sounds too good to be true, but it’s already happening.

There’s lots of buzz about the Eco Index, but I’m still not sure what it is or how it works.
Jamie Bainbridge: Basically, it’s a grassroots effort that was started about three-and-a-half years ago by the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) to help create a tool that would give companies a deeper understanding of the environmental impact of their products. About 100 member companies of OIA, Nau being one of them, came together in an industry-wide collaborative effort to build an open source, business-to-business tool that would evaluate a product’s overall environmental impact.

Wow. That sounds like a lot of work.
It is. But that’s not all. Last year, the world’s largest apparel companies—like Walmart and Target and others representing up to 50% of the apparel world—formed the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and approached OIA to join efforts in building a larger, more comprehensive tool that would be scalable for both small and large companies. So, ultimately, we had to find consensus from a long list of participants.

But, keep in mind, we are creating an industry-wide tool based on shared values of sustainability and conservation, the same values that have driven the outdoor industry since the beginning. And we are creating a common language across supply chains and manufacturing so that everyone is judged by the same standards.

It’s great in theory, but how does it work?
A product will be evaluated across its product lifecycles using the lenses of land use, water, waste, greenhouse gases and energy. Of course, this is a lot to think about, especially for companies just beginning the process, so we suggest starting with one aspect of your business, like packaging and integrating these small changes into your everyday business.

Makes sense, but what’s Nau got to do with this massive undertaking? And how is it going to affect the way things are run around here?
Well, I’ve been deep in the trenches of developing the content of the tool alongside my colleagues from REI, Patagonia, Timberland, Columbia, North Face and Mountain Equipment Co-op. And, essentially, it will allow us to have a deeper level of understanding of our products so that we’re always improving, progressing and evaluating the way thing are done. It’s going to allow us to make forward progress with our goals in sustainability, goals that we had no way to quantify before.

So we’re all going to be on the same playing field? Nau, Nike, REI and Walmart?
Yep, we will all be asking the same questions.

But this is a B2B tool, so what does it mean for the consumer?
For businesses, it will allow transparency in the way products are designed and built. For consumers, it’s a building block that allows them to trust our brand. And who knows, in time, it might just become a consumer-facing label.

And when is the debut of this ground-breaking tool?
Hopefully, we will pilot the tool in September using some of our own key products to evaluate the tool and give feedback before its official launch.

So this is really happening?
Oh yeah. You better believe it.

Next month, in part two of our three-part-series, we’ll take a deeper dive into the Eco Index and find out how a few of our key styles size up when put to the test.

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Toms revealed their new One for One™ product yesterday: Sunglasses. We’ve always been big supporters of the Toms mission and the aesthetic of their simple shoes, so the idea of buying a pair of shades and helping a person with a vision disability sounds great to us. The models are as versatile and classic as the footwear line, and we really love the simple brand identifier on the arm of the glasses—painted lines, which almost bring to mind resin-dip paint jobs on surfboards. The design, according to company founder Blake Mycoskie, will remind the wearer that she has help a person in need to be able to see. Our favorite pair is the Classic 101, shown above.

Well done, Toms!

A year ago we decided to feature Portraits of people who inspire us— foodies, artists, designers and people who go about their work in a provocative way. We hired the talented filmmaker, Jordan Kinley, to help us bring these Portraits to life (although, I can’t say the same for the pig).

Of course, finding people who inspire us is not difficult; we’re surrounded by them and follow their work every day. Our challenge, at Nau, is to be able to capture the very essence of what makes these visionaries so extraordinary, and bring it to you in a three-minute vignette.

This Spring, we decided to take the Provocateur series a bit deeper by asking the hard questions and listening to what they had to say. The result? Three people and three unique perspectives that might change the way you view things…It did for us.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll launch three Portraits: Allison Arieff, NY Times blogger; Drummond Lawson, the Green Giant at Method; and Sean Carasso, founder of Falling Whistles.

To kick off the series, here’s a little bit about Allison Arieff, our first Spring Portrait:

Allison Arieff – Writer, Visionary + Food Advocate

Allison is one of the original founders of Dwell magazine, a blogger for the New York Times, a food advocate, and an impressive gardener and mom.  She welcomed us into her home for the Portrait shoot last month on what was possibly the rainiest day in San Francisco’s history.

Over the course of several hours, we learned what has inspired her over the years and how her outlook on design and positive change has evolved throughout her career.  Her perspective on design and what the design community needs in order to evolve both enlightened and surprised us.

Her Portrait takes place in her sunroom which is currently being renovated.  Surrounded by stormy weather and a raw interior, she brings light to what could be considered a harsh environment, a perfect metaphor for how we view Allison’s role in the changing world of sustainable design.

Learn more about Allison’s view on design here. And, to see more jewelry like the necklace she’s wearing in her Portrait, visit kirstenmuenster.com.

How do you raise €22M to build an environmental battle ship? Greenpeace has an innovative answer: Sell the boat off piece-by-piece, allowing donors to connect emotionally and financially to the cause.

Thanks to a brilliant feat of web design, the new Rainbow Warrior has wind in its sails, with 32.9% of the construction already funded. The website not only tells the story of the ship’s history in a dramatic way, but also lets you virtually navigate through its plans, “browsing” the items you can fund from a €1 fork to €7,000 desalinater.

Another great feature is a time-lapse video of the ship’s construction progress, showing that the end result is tangible and that you, as a part owner, are steps closer to launching your vessel for change.

Found via CoolHunting

Japan is facing a monumental challenge in the wake of last week’s earthquake, tsunami and the resulting volatility of several nuclear power plants. In times like these, we ask ourselves what we can do. Several artists/craftspeople have started to contribute by donating proceeds from the sale of their work to relief efforts. A few of our favorites are displayed above (top to bottom):

Corter Leather | For Japan Bracelet | $20 to benefit the Red Cross

Wall Space Gallery | Bunny Face by Stella Kalaw | $50 to benefit Direct Relief International and Habitat for Humanity (see complete Life Support Japan collection)

W+K Studio | Help Japan Poster Series | Minimum $25 donation to benefit the Red Cross

Michael Rubenstein | Selected Prints to Help Japan | $100-$150 to benefit Japan Relief Efforts

Grant Cornett | Prints via TheLivest1.com (scroll down) | $50 to benefit the Red Cross