Winter sports are making a big impact – you can’t get away from it on the TV over the last week. But have you wondered what kind of impact an event this size – with 5,500 competitors – would have on the environment? When the last bobsleigh slides home, the Olympic Village is dismantled, and the urge to book a snowboarding holiday is instilled in the millions of home viewers, just how can we try to stay as green as we can?
Well, the Olympics themselves have prided themselves on having firmly green credentials. A lower footprint in area and carbon than previous Winter Olympics – right down to a 90 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases from energy generation. Even the 1000 medals being awarded to frosty Olympians are being made from recycled computer parts.
But where they tripped up is, ironically, in the snow. Or lack of it. An alarmingly dry month led to organisers having to drive 160 truckloads of snow on a three-hour drive to the slopes. They even had a helicopter carrying slingfuls of the white stuff to dump.
So if the Olympic committee are still having problems wrestling with carbon issues, what hope have the rest of us got? With plenty of time to book trips and head for the slopes before the season finishes, is there a right way to go about it?
“The important thing is how and where you travel, more than the resort,” Patrick Thorne tells Global Cool. He’s the editor of www.saveoursnow.com, a site that advises winter sports enthusiasts on their climate-conscious options. “Aspen is very green in some ways but attracts loads of long haul flights and private jets, which more than cancel out all their green efforts.”
Far better to travel by rail or coach to your mountain, Thorne suggests. Places such as www.snowcarbon.co.uk will organize it all for you by train, while skiweekends.com is doing the same thing for buses.
Sadly, you may not get much of a chance to really slash your carbon and simply head to Scotland. Snowlines across Europe are marching upwards every year, as Thorne explains – and the Bens are no exception: “The snowline has already moved above the tops of the highest mountains for much of the winter, most years. But not, thankfully, this one so far.”
Thorne also advises Global Cool skiers to look for individual resorts with green initiatives. You’ll find plenty in the ‘Resorts’ section of the Ski Club of Great Britain’s website, skiclub.co.uk. The news section of www.saveoursnow.com also lists initiatives for each resort.
Pick carefully, organise your trip by train this season – and try not to helicopter your own snow in, whatever you do…
lobal Cool Blogs
How green is… skiing (and other winter sports)?
Winter sports are making a big impact – you can’t get away from it on the TV over the last week. But have you wondered what kind of impact an even this size – with 5,500 competitors – would have on the environment? When the last bobsleigh slides home, the Olympic Village is dismantled, and the urge to book a snowboarding holiday is instilled in the millions of home viewers, just how can we try to stay as green as we can?
Well, the Olympics themselves have prided themselves on having firmly green credentials. A lower footprint in area and carbon than previous Winter Olympics – right down to a 90% reduction in greenhouse gases from energy generation [http://www.vancouver2010.com/dl/00/12/12/sus-snapshot-en-fr_12d-bG.pdf]. Even the 1000 medals being awarded to frosty Olympians are being made from recycled computer parts. [http://earth911.com/news/2009/10/28/your-old-computer-could-be-an-olympic-medal/]
But where they tripped up is, ironically, in the snow. Or lack of it. An alarmingly dry month led to organisers having to drive 160 truckloads of snow on a three-hour drive to the slopes. They even had a helicopter carrying slingfuls of the white stuff to dump.
So if the Olympic committee are still having problems wrestling with carbon issues, what hope have the rest of us got? With plenty of time to book trips and head for the slopes before the season finishes, is there a right way to go about it?
“The important thing is how and where you travel, more than the resort,” Patrick Thorne tells Global Cool. He’s the editor of www.saveoursnow.com, a site that advises winter sports enthusiasts on their climate-conscious options. “Aspen is very green in some ways but attracts loads of long haul flights and private jets, which more than cancel out all their green efforts.”
Far better to travel by rail or coach to your mountain, Thorne suggests. Places such as www.snowcarbon.co.uk will organize it all for you by train, while skiweekends.com is doing the same thing for buses.
Sadly, you may not get much of a chance to really slash your carbon and simply head to Scotland. Snowlines across Europe are marching upwards every year, as Thorne explains – and the Bens are no exception: “The snowline has already moved above the tops of the highest mountains for much of the winter, most years. But not, thankfully, this one so far.”
Thorne also advises Global Cool skiers to look for individual resorts with green initiatives. You’ll find plenty in the ‘Resorts’ section of the Ski Club of Great Britain’s website, skiclub.co.uk. The news section of www.saveoursnow.com also lists initiatives for each resort.
Pick carefully, organise your trip by train this season – and try not to helicopter your own snow in, whatever you do…
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