SUSTAINABLE SKIING

How Green is Skiing?

By Bob Berwyn, 12-27-07

	Along with resorts, the retail and manufacturing side of the industry are trying to catch the green wave with sustainable business practices. Photo by Bob Berwyn. See more landscape and nature photos at his Imagekind gallery.

If your ski town is anything like mine, then you’re probably familiar with all the creative ways old skis and snowboards are used. Here in my Summit County neighborhood, some people have fenced their quarter-acre lots entirely with old slats, and no ski or snowboard shop worth its salt is without a bench or a couple of chairs made from gear that is past its prime. One Breckenridge resident even recycles old poles into wind chimes. He sells them, with the money going toward Team Summit, one of our local youth racing outfits.

There’s even a whole cottage industry devoted to making furniture. For my birthday a few years ago, someone gave me a stylish deck chair made from old Rossi St Comps and Stratos. Along with being a comfortable lounger (complete with a can holder in the armrest), this chair brings back some great memories of college ski racing, when I babied those ST Comps with daily tune-ups and kept them within sight of my dorm bed at all times.

But let’s face it. Each year, thousands and thousands of skis, boots and snowboards end up in landfills around the region. Especially in areas with major resorts, including my own stomping grounds, this stuff can add up. Kevin Berg, one of the recycling experts with the High Country Conservation Center, said old equipment can make up a big chunk of the waste stream at times, especially when local shops retire their rental fleets. This stuff is not, to say the least, very biodegradable.

And while the resort side of the industry has been preening its green feathers for several years, the retail and manufacturing side has been working a little more quietly to take steps in a similar direction. In a recent Summit Daily News story, I reported on efforts by the Snowsports Industries of America (SIA) to green up retail operations and work with manufacturers to reduce environmental impacts.

A big part of that plan is to try and recycle old equipment on a large scale. SIA president David Ingemie said he wants to acquire several shredding machines that could reduce at least part of the material into plastic pellets. They could re-used as durable plastic for flooring material, he said.

To pay for the shipping and processing, SIA is floating the idea of an environmental fee that could be added on to every piece of equipment sold.

One of the challenges lies in the nature of the equipment. Many skis and snowboards are put together with layers of all sorts of materials, and as Ingemie said, it’s engineered to stay together, not come apart.

And he also said he’s feeling some resistance from retailers, who are asking about the cost, and also whether or not consumers even care.

And since much of the manufacturing these days is done in China, there’s the fundamental question that looms big in many other, larger industries: What sort of environmental standards are in place in that country to ensure environmental protection.

Other similar news stories on the ski industry’s green efforts have elicited interesting comments from readers. One of the most interesting discussion threads I saw was after the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story on the ski area environmental scorecard that’s issued each year by a coalition of environmental watchdog groups.

Some readers lambasted the industry for being fundamentally damaging to the environment with direct impacts to forests and streams, not to mention the energy use associated with operating vast lift networks and huge snowmaking systems and in getting skiers to and from the resorts, mostly via gas-guzzling SUVs. Check out the comment thread here.

But those comments seemed to reach more into a philosophical realm and likely aren’t going to be resolved anytime soon. Skiing, at least as long as it can survive global warming, is likely to remain a recreational mainstay in the Rocky Mountain region. As such, efforts like the SIA’s should be applauded and supported.

And just as is the intention with the ski area scorecard, consumers can make all the difference by voting with their wallets and letting companies know that environmental performance plays a part in purchasing decisions.

Pioneer Sports, a local Summit County retailer, is already thinking along those lines by trying to work with suppliers and manufacturers. Owner Mark Wimberly said he’ll be writing letters to the companies he works with, urging them to green up their businesses practices, as he himself is doing at his Frisco store.

And Kurt Baehmann, an employee at Pioneer Sports, recently spoke up at a local ski resort environmental forum. Baehmann challenged the large resort conglomerates to leverage their mass buying power to help nudge the equipment sector into the green zone.

Wimberly and Baehmann singled out several companies they work with, including Yakima, which works with the Carbon Fund to offset greenhouse gas emissions, Arbor, a snowboard company offering bamboo boards (a fast-growing renewable resource), and Purl, a Summit County wax maker with a full line of non-petroleum-based waxes.

There are other companies out there thinking along the same lines (Patagonia comes to mind as the best example), and Wimberly and Baehmann challenged consumers to educate themselves and use their purchasing decisions to make a difference.

Do you know of any ski or snowboard-related companies that are practicing sustainable business and environmental ethics? Click the comment link below and let us know.

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