Cotopaxi: When selfish adventuring isn’t so selfish.
I have a European shoulder bag. You may call it a purse, but I assure you it’s not. I’ve had it for about 15 years, and it is beat to shit. Like, really beat to shit. There are holes in it. It is covered in stains, most of which mysteriously appear. I suspect there is puke in at least one place on it. It certainly smells like it, anyway. But it holds my stuff – my computer for work-related things, fin keys, fins, wax, fins, and as much sand as I could ever ask for. Because it still held my computer and my sand, I refused to get another one.
Then my laptop fell out of it and a homeless man told me I should “throw that piece of shit away.” He was wearing pants that looked like they were attacked by rabid beavers, and he told me my bag needed to be put out of its misery. So I looked into bags that I could throw around and fill with sand and puke. And oh boy, did I ever find one. The company that made it is called Cotopaxi, and they do a lot more than just make stuff to put other stuff in. It’s called Gear for Good, and it’s so much better than Gear for Profit, or whatever the other companies are doing.
In a nutshell, Cotopaxi ties each piece of gear to a humanitarian cause in one of the poorest regions of the world. They only sell online, so it’s cheaper than a store (damn the middle man!), and when you choose whatever it is you’re buying, they tell you exactly which organization they’re going to help, and how they’re going to do it. And every single one of their products has a “Human Lifespan Guarantee,” which means it’ll last for 61 years, which, according to the World Health Organization, is the average lifespan of a person living in the underdeveloped world. That isn’t exactly a long time for a life, but it’s a long time for a backpack.
I got a Volta bag, which is awesome. I’ll be brief about it, because although the bag is great, the best part is what happens when you get one of them. 35 L, stitching that would hold the Hoover Dam together, and it looks good. No flash, no giant logos, just a plain old nice bag for adventuring with: pockets all over the place, a padded laptop sleeve, and an anti-theft zipper lock. Now for the best part. When you get a Volta, Cotopaxi helps provide a new building for students at the village school in Ghana, near the Volta river. By buying a bag, you provide educational facilities to one student for THREE MONTHS. You get to carry your shit around and look good doing it, and a kid gets to learn. They’re getting the better end of the deal.
The Volta bag. Did you backpack help the kids?
Other examples include the Cusco pack, which helps educate a child in Peru for a week. When you buy a Cotopaxi + India water bottle, a person in India gets clean water for six months through Cotopaxi’s partner, Charity: Water. In a refreshing example of transparency, their website has a tab called Factories. It lists where they make their things, and how they choose the place they’re making them. They’ve got pictures of the employees and their working conditions. How great is that?
Check out Cotopaxi’s website here. You’ll be impressed.
