Usa Snowboarding Champions
Ski Industry Sustainable Slopes Program
Going Green… This is a cliff note version of the various environmental programs ski resorts are championing as part of their Sustainable Slopes Program, which is an environmental charter for ski areas spearheaded by the National Ski Areas Association.
ski resorts use a tremendous amount of energy to run their operations — powering lifts, heating and lighting lodges, etc — and produce significant amounts of waste in the process. They also disrupt sensitive mountainside ecosystems.
The Sustainable Slopes charter helps resorts reduce their carbon footprint by targeting ways to improve their energy efficiency, encourages the purchase of electricity from renewable resources such as wind power, and other programs intended to conserve energy, and programs for reducing waste and minimizing their impact to mountain ecosystems.
Programs encouraging the use of wind power and solar power are currently generating the most attention right now, but resorts are also doing things such as recycling, waste reduction, using biodiesel to fuel vehicles and groomers, replacing old snowmaking equipment with equipment that is energy efficient and use less water to make the same amount of snow, using waste energy from snowmaking equipment to heat buildings, upgrading motors on lifts, using compost toilets in the summit and mid-mountain facilities, doing erosion control, and replanting trees.
The top 10 U.S. green ski resorts according to the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition (SACC) include:
1. Squaw Valley USA – California
2. Aspen Mountain Ski Resort – Colorado
3. Buttermilk Mountain Ski Resort – Colorado
4. Sugar Bowl Ski Resort – California
5. Sundance Resort – Utah
6. Alpine Meadows Ski Area – California
7. Park City Mountain Resort – Utah
8. Bogus Basin Mountain Resort – Idaho
9. Aspen Highlands Ski Resort – Colorado
10. Powderhorn Resort – Colorado
The Ski Green Guide also tracks sustainable skiing efforts by the ski industry and skiing public. It’s a site where you can learn the cleanest way of traveling to a destination, find the ski areas that are active in keeping mountainsides beautiful, and find ways of enjoying the mountains that use less of the earth’s resources.
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