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What are the ski resorts doing?

Many have a climate policy and these include different initiatives such as recycling, communal heating, renewable energy schemes, traffic and waste reduction policies and ensuring new buildings cause minimal environmental impact with a green building policy.

Aspen for example has committed itself to legally binding annual reductions in its CO2 emissions and has introduced a whole raft of initiatives such a running its snowcats on biofuel and using renewable hydro-electric energy to power part of its lift system.

Lech's biomass communal heating plant burns communal waste to provide heating and hot water for 100 hotels and over 200 homes and businesses.

To find out 'how green is your ski resort', freelance writer Patrick Thorne who has worked on a wide variety of contracts and has also collected information on climate change in ski resorts of more than 250 ski resorts worldwide. The details of his work are published on www.saveoursnow.com website.

Typical environmental initiatives explained

Climate policy – does the resort have one?

If a ski resort has a climate policy it means that the great and the good in the resort have got together to work out a strategy to minimise the resort’s impact on climate change and global warming. This can include many different initiatives such as recycling, communal heating, ensuring new buildings cause minimal environmental impact and so on. Most important is the ethos of the community to take the potential environmental impact of all aspects of life in the resort in to consideration now and in the future.

Green building policy – does the resort have one?

Ski resorts are increasingly looking at minimising the environmental impact of their construction projects, as well as the impact of newly erected buildings and other infrastructure.

Having a green building policy means resorts pout environmental concerns at the top of the list when working on new projects. This can include a myriad of things from using helicopters to reduce damage to surrounding land when building ion sensitive areas to using natural, local materials for building and looking for maximum insulation and minimum power requirements, ideally supplied in as eco-friendly a way as possible.

Eco-friendly power-user?

Eco-friendly power typically means wind generated or other naturally produced energy such as solar cells. On the other hand some fuel sources like bio diesel are less polluting than conventional fuels so could be considered a step in the right direction, if not the perfect answer.

Of course there is a great variation in how much (or how little!) a resort can do from running a few snowmobiles on bio-diesel to having the entire resort operating on wind power or other renewable energies.

Does the resort recycle?

Resorts increasingly offer recycling facilities to guests, either within their accommodation and/or at special recycling points, which are hopefully convenient.

As always there’s a range of how far individual resorts go. Some even look to use waste to run their communal heating systems and others even make targets to recycle 100% of all waste.

Traffic reduction policy – does the resort have one?

Traffic reduction can take many forms. Several Swiss resorts and a few in other countries have banned cars altogether for decades. Some have never had cars on their streets.

Other approaches include pedestrianised centres and out-of-centre car parking with resort centre access only on foot or by public transport (hopefully, electrically powered buses). These, along with expensive and/or severely restricted resort centre parking and an efficient free and cheap bus service all help to reduce traffic problems and thus cut emissions.

Waste reduction policy – does the resort have one?

The influx of winter guests to ski areas tends to bring an influx of what's politely termed 'waste water' to the mountains as thousands of guests use the toilets on the mountain and shower in their hotel rooms.

The most environmentally forward thinking ski areas are using techniques such as composting to reduce waste from mountain restaurants. In some areas purified waste water is also being used for snowmaking, on the one hand an eco friendly measure as it recycles, on the other it might be argued that if water is needed for snowmaking in an area of marginal precipitation, there shouldn't be a ski area there.

Heat recycling – does the resort have one?

Systems exist that recycle heat produced by machinery so that it can be used to warm nearby buildings or in other ways. Systems generating heat include refrigeration units, lifts and snow making compressors.

Renewable power generator

This means that the resort generates some or all of the power it needs to operate itself (separately or in addition to buying this power in from outside suppliers or offsetting consumption on normal energy from fossil fuels by buying green credits). Power systems include those that use geo-thermal heat, hydro-electricity, solar panels, bio mass heating systems and any other renewable energy supply, or a combination of several.