SIA The Intelligent Partner - Summer 2007 - (Page 9)

es. We can inﬂuence the communities built around our resorts. We can lobby our local, state and federal policymakers: They’ll listen to us. To do all that, we ﬁrst have to clean up our own act. As individual businesses, we need to do what we can to minimize our own carbon footprints, beginning with what’s cheapest and easiest to do, and going on to projects that will have an effect in the local community. As usual, the folks who can make the biggest difference are the folks closest to the public: snowsports retailers. Pete Nestor at Nestor’s, in Whitehall, Penn., notes that it’s not easy for a family-owned, stand-alone store to take on large new projects. But he points out that the business has always been more than a ski and board shop: It’s an outdoor store, and has therefore been selling the concept of responsible wilderness use for some decades. “We’ve stocked earth-friendly products all along,” he says, pointing to inventories based on organic cottons and recycled polypropylenes. When the store was renovated in 2004, Nestor switched from electric heat to natural gas, and replaced all the lighting ﬁxtures with high-efﬁciency ﬂuorescent and mercury-vapor bulbs. “They’re expensive, but they’re efﬁcient, color-true and they last forever,” he noted. “We coated the roof with a reﬂective white polymer system.” That change alone made for a huge savings in air-conditioning energy – and costs. Gary Cole, of Cole Sports in Utah, runs a larger, multi-outlet retail enterprise. Cole has been beating the drum for environmental efﬁciency since opening his ﬁrst store, in Park City, in 1972. “There was no recycling program at all in Park City then,” he recalls. “I realized how much cardboard we were throwing away, and began organizing a city-wide program to deal with it. By the early 90s, when we began expanding to other locations, we’d helped the recycling program to acquire a cardboard crusher. We centered all our own recycling activities on our shipping and receiving facility. Now we recycle all the paper products we handle, from packaging to ofﬁce forms. We encourage customers to leave helmet boxes, shoeboxes and the like with us, in the recycling bins we put prominently at the rear entrances to all our stores. We recycle plastic and aluminum in all the forms that pass through our locations.” Cole goes further. His company runs entirely on wind power, which he purchases “at not a substantial premium.” Park City has been running biodiesel buses for the past three years, so he bought himself a VW TDI Passat Wagon and runs it on biodiesel year round: 20 percent biodiesel in the winter, 99 percent in the warm months. “I’m looking at running the company’s pickup truck on natural gas, since there’s a ﬁlling station for it just three blocks away,” he says. “We’re going to need a second truck soon, and I’m debating between natural gas and biodiesel for it.” Cole and his employees stay busy evangelizing their business contacts. “Scott Ford, our hardgoods buyer, talks to vendors about what they’re doing. Some are quite serious about their carbon emissions. Dave Hanscomb, in charge of shipping and receiving, operates the recycling program and works with the city.” Cole himself has been lobbying his peers at the SSL buying group, and executive director Steve Rogers reports that the group is close to ﬁnishing work on a best-practices document for its members to use. The national ofﬁce is in the midst of converting to paperless operations. Cole has also been working with local condominium rental business, pointing out that condo kitchens are too small to house recycling bins, and housekeeping maids too busy to recycle. Park City’s condos, therefore, are a major source of non-conforming trash. He works with the city, helping to sponsor an annual spring clean-up day. “You don’t want to be too preachy, especially with customers,” Cole warns. “We have guys around here who think that Al Gore is crazy, and we don’t want to alienate them. So he put up a storyboard in the back entrance hall to tell the energy story subtly to those who take the time to stop and read about it. Specialty Sports Ventures, the 120-store multi-state joint venture between the Gart family and Vail Resorts, thinks in terms of local impact by giving providing incentives for individual store managers, and regional managers, to come up with their own green programs. According to CEO Ken Gart, the company provides a 50 cent match for each dollar raised in local promotions. Some of these programs are for nongreen local charities – search and rescue squads, children’s hospitals, Toys for Tots – but Gart would like to see more of them directed at environmental issues. “This country has been incredibly short-sighted on the climate issue,” he said. “All of us should be extremely active in talking to local politicians to get local ﬁ xes.” WHAT CAN YOU DO? First, you do the easy stuff – low-hanging fruit that can be implemented quickly and cheaply, and that has a short pay-back period. A typical retail store in snow country spends 26 percent of its energy budget on space heating, 18 percent on cooling, 18 percent on lighting, 15 percent on ofﬁce equipment, 5 percent on ventilation, 3 percent on water heating and 17 percent on various other items: cooking and refrigeration. Here’s a quick rundown on steps to take, starting with the simple and cheap: You’ve probably already handled the lighting problem, because replacing hot, thirsty incandescent bulbs with cool, efﬁcient ﬂuorescents pays for itself in a few months – not only in power saved, but in labor to replace bulbs, since ﬂuorescents last eight to twelve times longer. But focus on technical progress in lighting. The rule of thumb for progressive merchandising is 1.5 watts of lighting per square foot of retail space, plus a modest allowance for accent lighting in display windows. | SIA | T.I.P. | SUMMER 2007 | 1 Look to the lighting 9

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of SIA The Intelligent Partner - Summer 2007

Contents Word off the Slopes SIA Staff Contributors SIA Business SIA Board of Directors Greening the Biz Want Instant Success? Just Add Snow Out and About Day in the Life – Supplier Day in the Life – Retailer Day in the Life – Rep Products & Services Index to Advertisers

SIA The Intelligent Partner - Summer 2007

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