BEFORE “THINK GLOBAL, act local”
was a trendy catchphrase, Peggy Shepard
embodied the maxim. In 1988, she cofounded
West Harlem Environmental Action (WE
ACT for Environmental Justice), the commu-
nity organization where she continues as
executive director and which has made her a
pioneer of the environmental-justice move-
ment and grassroots activism. With more
than three decades committed to combating
the environmental racism that accounts for a
disproportionate amount of pollution being
concentrated in low-income, often urban,
communities of color such as her own,
Shepard, 72, has brought attention and ac-
tion to previously overlooked issues of equity
in environmental policy.
After a professional pivot from the media
(she was the first black reporter at The India-
napolis News and a lifestyle editor at Redbook
and Essence) to politics (she served as public-
relations director for Jesse Jackson’s 1984
presidential campaign), Shepard was encour-
aged by labor honcho Bill Lynch to run for of-
fice herself. She promptly won as Democratic
district leader for New York City’s West Har-
lem, a neighborhood name she invented to
reposition her oft-ignored uptown area. It was
then that she learned about the new North
River sewage treatment plant, located in her
district on the West Side Highway at 137th
Street. Its noxious odors and emissions were
causing illness in local residents, so Shepard
took action. Wearing gas masks, she and six
others—the so-called “Sewage Seven”—staged a
sit-in across the West Side Highway and River-
side Drive. They got arrested, but the act of
civil disobedience helped propel their winning
lawsuit against the city, earning a $1.1 million
settlement plus a $55 million commitment to
clean up the plant.
The MTA’s 1988 decision to build a bus
depot on 133rd Street across from a housing
development and junior high school led to
Shepard’s discovery that five of seven bus
depots in Manhattan were located uptown
(exposing the area to more fumes). Through a
lawsuit filed with NRDC against the MTA, WE
ACT successfully campaigned for city buses to
be converted to hybrids. “We take a lot of
credit for that,” she says. “One reason I feel
really good about that is so often you think it’s
just some little neighborhood community
issue. Well, it impacted every bus in the city. It
impacted everyone. And, as a community orga-
nization, you’re not always able to say that.”
WE ACT focuses on community-based ac-
tivism and education to battle local insidious
environmental hazards and promote initia-
tives to
IN 2006, ROSE MARCARIO had a midlife crisis. She’d spent
years working in private equity and Silicon Valley while also practicing
Buddhism—but her personal and professional lives simply didn’t align. “I
just couldn’t go on being part of a system that was all about making a few
shareholders really rich,” she says. So Marcario quit and went on a medita-
tion retreat in India. “It was an Eat, Pray, Love moment—minus the eating
and love parts.”
After several months, Marcario headed back to California. She needed to
find a company to run—one that fit her values. Then she heard Patagonia
founder Yvon Chouinard was looking for a CFO. She’d always admired him
and thought Patagonia seemed about as close as one could get to a truly
conscious clothing company. The two hit it off, and Marcario joined the com-
pany in 2008, taking over as president and CEO in 2014. “Yvon was there
during the Santa Barbara oil spill, which is what inspired the first Earth Day
50 years ago,” she explains. “He walked beaches covered in oil. It’s part of his
belief that Patagonia has to pave the way for progress on this planet.”
And indeed, the company has done so: While making high-quality out-
door products designed to last a lifetime, it became the first company to start
using exclusively organic cotton (in 1996) and the first to make fleece from
recycled bottles (in 1993). It’s been donating
MOTIVATOR
THE
Outdoor-gear maker Patagonia pioneers
“fixing not buying” and gives back—in a big way
BY LINDSAY TALBOT
[CONTINUED ON P. 114] [CONTINUED ON P. 114]
Rose Marcario
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