Make Winter Cold Again: Our Annual Donations are on Their Way!

We’ve done it, everyone. We’ve nearly made it to the end of 2020, one of the strangest years ever where good news seemed few and far between. It was a year that both felt endless and yet surprisingly short at the same time.

While it seemed like a lifetime ago, we started the year watching Australia burn as it battled its most devastating fire season on record. We saw flooding in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia lead to massive population displacement leading to food scarcity for millions. We were gifted a few shorts weeks of climate change optimism when the Coronavirus swept the world and nature seemingly started to “heal itself.” It didn’t, of course, but it was nice to feel optimistic for a short period.

Photo by Christian Hoiberg.

Covid-19 has dominated the news cycle this year and for good reason but there’s one thing that has been quietly sitting the background, ticking away and getting worse every day: Climate Change. Despite initial reports that the climate would be better from the Pandemic, the year 2020 is set to be the second hottest year ever on record.

Vallerret Photography Gloves was built around a love of winter. We were founded on the ideology that winter is a season to be cherished and celebrated, not dreaded and avoided. We thrive in the cold crisp air and we rejoice after a fresh dump of snow. We have dedicated our entire livelihood to helping others love winter as much as we do and we want to do everything we can to keep winter around for as long as possible.

Last year we made a promise to donate 1% of our annual revenue to 1% for the Planet, a non-profit organization who bridges the gap between companies looking to make a difference and environmental nonprofits needing funding. They have created a growing alliance of businesses who recognize the severity of protecting the environment and who are dedicated to taking responsibility and we are proud to be apart of the movement.

As 2020 comes to an end, we are making our final donations to the organizations below. We carefully selected to partner with these organizations because of their extraordinary achievements so far as well as their connection to places like Lofoten which is an iconic location for photographers around the globe.

The Conservation Alliance:

The Conservation Alliance is a group of like-mind companies that disburses its collective annual membership dues to grassroots environmental organizations. They direct funding to community-based campaigns to protect threatened wild habitat and outdoor recreation through rigorous grant proposal review processes that ensure the grants go to organizations that can succeed given the necessary financial resources.

The Norwegian Society for Conservation:

The NWSC is the recipient we chose for our Black Friday donations. Instead of having a Black Friday sale, we promised to donate 100% of our proceedsto the Norwegian Society for Conservation to help further their efforts in protecting the Norwegian wilderness. We are particularly proud to support their efforts in protecting Lofoten, one of the most iconic Arctic locations for photography.

Protect OurWinters:

Protect Our Winters (POW) is a global nonprofit that helps passionate outdoor people protect the places and lifestyles they love from climate change. They are a community of athletes, scientists, creatives, and business leaders advancing non-partisan policies that protect our world today and for future generations. Through their advocacy, they work to educate, register and turn out enough voters to shift governmental responses to the climate crisis

We strive to make the best choices for the environment in production, but anyway you look at it, production creates pollution. We are very aware of that which is why we are committed to offsetting our climate impact by donating to these nonprofits.

We are far from perfect and while we know there is a lot of work to be done, we are excited to be taking the steps to conduct responsible, sustainable business and give back. We know we haven’t made these contributions on our own. Each contribution is a direct result of your purchases. Every glove, every beanie, every microfibre cloth helped contribute to our annual donation.

Photo by Pedro Kin.

The end of the year is always a time for reflection and contemplation as we decide how we want to show up in the new year. What changes will we want to make? How do we want the coming year to unfold? We are happy to be recommitting ourself to another year of donations going into 2021 and we’d love to hear from you if there are any organizations you think we should know about who might also benefit from the funding.

Thanks to all of you in our Vallerret community for sticking with us this year. We are eternally grateful for this passionate community of winter photographers and we can’t wait to bring you some exciting news in 2021. Merry Christmas and happy New Year from all of us here at Vallerret!