I grew up in Norway, and have been skiing my whole life. My ski experiences have led to my love for nature and mountains – and made it even more valuable for me to take care of it, and be conscious of my environmental footprint.
Photo: Øystein Nondal
Some tips
Firstly I want to share 7 tips with you regarding becoming more environmentally friendly as a skier:
- Stop/reduce your amount of ski trips with flight
- Use an electrical vehicle for your ski traveling
- Buy second-hand or more environmentally friendly ski equipment
- Eat less meat and more vegetables, and never throw food away that can be eaten
- Invest in an environmentally friendly company
- Buy CO2 quotas
- And last but not least – aim to be a good role model
Some facts
I’ve made a graph showing what reduction in CO2 different actions you and I can do in our normal life if you’re more of a numbers type.
All the CO2 numbers are gathered from the Norwegian environment organization; Framtiden i vår hender. They have more tips and info here: https://www.framtiden.no/gronne-tips/
From these nine CO2 reduction actions in the graph, it’s clear that four of them contribute with a significant reduction of CO2 annually – they are as seen:
- Skip a long flight
- Replace a diesel car with an electric car*
- Replace the oil boiler with a pellet boiler
- Moving from a house to an apartment**
*Remember that it’s important to drive an electric car more than 30.000 km to make it more environmentally friendly than a fossil fuel car. **It’s important to have an energy efficient house or apartment.
I believe all these four (or all nine in the graph) actions are possible for skiers like you and me to design our future according to, and they can lead to be very positive for our climate and pollution reduction contribution. Sorting your waste is great, but it’s not enough to really contribute 😉
Photo: Vegard Aasen
To be environmentally friendly as a skier, I think you have to first be aware of your own carbon footprint. Thereafter, you can be creative and try to choose different ways to reduce your footprint without dropping the outdoor activities you love, travel, and have fun. For this lesson, I will recommend using a digital carbon footprint calculator. And, of course, compensate for your carbon footprint if you need help to reduce them. Here is one useful link where you can do both these actions and more. Link: https://www.myclimate.org/
Good luck with becoming a more environmentally friendly skier and human! If you have some questions or tips, send them to Norrøna!
See you out there!
Greetings from Gjermund Nordskar (feel free to follow my upcoming and hopefully climate-positive adventures at @gjemundnordskar 🙂
2 thoughts on “How to become more environmentally friendly as a skier?”
One note: planes are more efficient than cars, assuming a car only has one passenger. So if your options are to drive solo or fly solo, driving (a gas/diesel car) is worse! It starts to even out in the 2-3 passenger range, depending on the car.
Hi Peter and thanks for the intereseting comment! Sounds like you have a good point there. The best car option is off corse to drive an electrical vehicle fueled by renewable energy. Do you have some numers/statistic/link that describes your calculation? Had been interesting to see! 🙂
Greetings,
Gjermund