Neel Parikh

As consumers, we’re constantly bombarded with options, and we filter those options based on criteria which were typically limited to price, quality, style, and brand. With an increased focus on social awareness, environmental practices, ethical sourcing, and a myriad of other “trendy concerns”, the criteria by which many of us make our judgments have changed. I’m all for social responsibility, but not everything is black and white.

Yah, there’s things that in my opinion are no-brainers: for example going to a store and buying a bag of chips – why would I want to then put that bag of chips in a plastic bag? It just seems, I don’t know… ignorant. Making a bit of a generalization, i’d say that i see this kind of behaviour in Americans far more often than Canadians. I’ve been to houses where people routinely eat from paper and plastic plates, drink individually bottled water, and drive Land Cruisers that will never leave paved surfaces. But I digress, the point of this post wasn’t a rant on environmentalism… I’m sure I’ll come back to that topic another time.

I few months ago, I bought an Arc’teryx jacket. I’ve always loved Arc’Teryx products, but it’s always been hard to justify the price. My own justification has always been that their products are designed and made in Canada, and have impeccable quality.  So as I’m just about ready to check out, I look at the tag, and to my amazement, it was made in China. Wtf? I ended up buying it anyway, because a) it was 50% off, b) the quality still seemed to be pretty damn good, and most importantly… c) i’m not THAT anal.  I was just somewhat shocked that a company that has always been a Canadian symbol started outsourcing their production overseas.  I eventually came across this article which somewhat explained the situation, along with a lot of customer comments. I few days later, i picked up a pretty sweet Arc’teryx chalk bucket from MEC… the tag… “Made in Philippines“. I had come to a conclusion of my own – If i could get something of similar quality for a similar (or cheaper) price, that was made in Canada, I would. But the fact is that it’s incredibly difficult to find locally made products that can rival their quality/price ratio.

For those of you who really are concerned about where their products come from, check out what MEC is doing (in addition to putting the country of origin next to every product in their catalog).  Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles is another good read.

In the mean time I’ll be enjoying my awesometastic Caco chalk bucket!