Wednesday 7th January
Environmental overview of all resorts
The Green Resort Guide has been set up to provide information about the eco-friendliness of ski resorts. We hope to drive up standards in the industry by highlighting the resorts that are doing a lot to help preserve the environment, as well as those that aren't doing much at all.
By looking at the development of ski resorts around the world, it is impossible to avoid certain realisations that include the fact that whilst resorts used to report new ski runs each winter, now they more often report new snowmaking coverage. Then there are the trends of rising average temperatures and slowly declining snowfall. Many still believe these are a short term blip, but the fact is that glaciers are melting, and this piece of evidence is not easy to simply dismiss.
The affects of climate change have more to do with mankind's activities worldwide, rather than just the activities of skiers and snowboarders. However, an increasing number of ski resorts, tour operators and others connected with wintersports are trying to do what they can to minimise the impact of snowsports on the mountain environment. Skiers and boarders are some of the first to see the impact of climate change, in the same way that those few who get to the ice caps are also seeing the evidence first hand. The vast majority of wintersports enthusiasts love the beauty of winter in the mountains and will endeavour to help preserve the white world that draws us to the slopes.
In our search to discover what individual resorts are doing to help minimise their impact on the environment, we often found the information hard to come by with a few worthy exceptions. And although it is difficult to compare the efforts of individual ski areas when there are so many different ways to make a difference, we have tried to find common ground for comparison. If you think a resort has been over-rated, or under-rated, we encourage you to get in touch.
