Last week, two members of our team, Heather Pratt and Vito Castelgrande, spent two days walking the halls of the U.S. Capitol as part of the Outdoor Industry Association's annual Capitol Summit. They came back with sore feet, a pocket Constitution, and a clearer sense of why showing up in Washington matters for a company like LifeStraw.
Here's what that looked like, and why we do it.
What is the OIA?
The Outdoor Industry Association is a collective of business leaders, policymakers, and companies working together to grow the outdoor economy responsibly. They advocate for smart policy, push for sustainability across the industry, and work to expand access to the outdoors for everyone. The numbers behind the industry they represent are significant: outdoor recreation accounts for $1.3 trillion in economic activity, supports 5.2 million jobs in the U.S., and represents 2.4% of total U.S. GDP. The OIA makes sure Congress understands what's at stake when it makes decisions about public lands, recreation infrastructure, and trade.
We've been involved with OIA for a few years now. Vito is closely engaged with their sustainability work and will be attending their annual Catalyst conference later this year. Heather recently joined their Trade Advisory Council. The Capitol Summit is one of the most direct ways we participate in their policy agenda.
What is the Capitol Summit?
The Capitol Summit is a two-day event in Washington, D.C. The first day is dedicated to training, where attendees get briefed on the specific policy priorities for the year and how to communicate them effectively. The second day is all meetings.
This year, the OIA brought together just under 60 people from across the outdoor industry. Together, they held 48 meetings with the offices of senators, representatives, and congressional committees, all in a single day. Heather and Vito were part of a team that met with six offices, all Representatives and Senators from Maryland and Montana.
One thing that makes the Summit effective is how the teams are organized. The OIA tries to pair participants with the representatives from their own states. When Heather and Vito walked into a Maryland office and explained the impact of outdoor recreation on Maryland communities, or mentioned the $132 million that came to the state through a specific funding program, they weren't speaking abstractly. They were constituents talking to their representatives about real issues.
The outdoor recreation issues
Two policy priorities drove most of the outdoor recreation conversations this year.
The first is the Legacy Restoration Fund. Created under the Great American Outdoors Act of 2020, the LRF provided a mechanism for national parks to address what's known as deferred maintenance: broken restrooms, deteriorating trails, aging visitor facilities, water systems that need repair. Over its first five years, the fund invested $6.8 billion across nearly 400 projects. That funding window ran through 2025, and agencies are now drawing down what's left. The ask to Congress was to reauthorize and strengthen the fund so that work can continue.
The second priority was the EXPLORE Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation signed into law in January 2025 after nearly a decade in development. The law gives federal agencies tools to improve recreation access, modernize permitting, expand accessibility, and better support the rural communities that sit at the edges of our public lands. The problem is that the law was passed without dedicated funding, and early 2025 brought significant reductions in the federal workforce, which means the agencies responsible for implementing it are stretched thin. The ask here was for oversight: for members of Congress to stay engaged, make calls to the Department of the Interior, and push for implementation funding in the next budget cycle.
These conversations landed well across the political spectrum. Several of the Montana senators they met with, representing a state where 27% of the land is federally owned, were vocal supporters of protecting public lands. They described public land as something that makes America distinct. The alignment on that point, even across different positions on funding mechanisms, was encouraging.
The trade issues
The other half of the Summit's agenda was harder. Tariff policy has been a real source of pressure for LifeStraw and for the outdoor industry broadly, and the conversations in Washington reflected that.
Here's the basic picture: tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were recently invalidated by the Supreme Court. But the administration is pursuing similar outcomes through different mechanisms. Section 122 tariffs are currently in place, capped at 15% and set to expire on July 24th. Before that date, the U.S. Trade Representative is expected to finalize a new round of Section 301 tariffs, which carry no cap and no defined timeline.
For LifeStraw, this matters directly. South Korea is a critical part of our supply chain, and it's named in two of the USTR investigations currently underway. Our membrane filtration technology is not manufactured domestically at a scale or specification that meets our needs. The argument we made in Washington was straightforward: we support the idea of building more domestic manufacturing capacity, but that takes years of investment and planning, and in the meantime, exemptions should be considered for products and materials with no viable U.S. alternative.
We weren't alone in making this case. Other companies described receiving a tariff bills in excess of the value of the goods they were importing. These companies went through the work of trying to onshore their manufacturing and found that the equipment they would need to bring that work stateside was also subject to tariffs. The only manufacturer willing to work with them at their volume was in China. Telling that story in a congressional office, alongside LifeStraw's own situation, gave the issue a human dimension that spreadsheets don't.
Some offices were receptive. Some were less so. Trade policy is a harder sell than public lands, and the conversations reflected the political complexity around tariffs right now.
Why we go
It would be easy to look at 48 meetings over one day and wonder how much actually changes. Here's how we think about it.
Congressional staff are often the ones absorbing this information and carrying it forward. When they see representatives from an industry that accounts for trillions in economic activity and millions of jobs showing up consistently, bringing real stories from real companies, that builds a record. The National Parks Conservancy was in Washington the same week with an even larger group, making many of the same points about public lands. These points accumulate.
This was our second year attending the Capitol Summit. We came back with a list of improvements for next year: getting policy materials earlier so they can prepare more thoroughly, bringing product samples to leave with offices they visit, staying in contact with congressional staff throughout the year rather than only during the Summit itself. They even extended invitations to Maryland Senators and staffers to visit LifeStraw's offices.
None of this is flashy work and a lot of it happens behind the scenes. But the outdoor industry has a real stake in the decisions being made in Washington right now, and we think it's worth showing up and saying so.
