Eco friendly boots?

[snowfinder]

Always seeing ski companies talking about making a greener ski, clothing companies talking about using cleaner materials. Never any thing about the giant pieces of plastics on out feet, why is that? Is it too hard to come up with something new? Too much money to come up with a solution? Same goes with bindings. If companies actually want to act like they care then maybe they should tackle the whole ski set and not the ones that market well.

 

[CatdickBojangles]

Always seeing ski companies talking about making a greener ski, clothing companies talking about using cleaner materials. Never any thing about the giant pieces of plastics on out feet, why is that? Is it too hard to come up with something new? Too much money to come up with a solution? Same goes with bindings. If companies actually want to act like they care then maybe they should tackle the whole ski set and not the ones that market well.

I was thinking about this listening to the Gear:30 podcast with WNDR. The material they use sounds like it could work well in a boot if engineered correctly.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Plastic is just a good material. I mean could I run a solar powered factory (given enough solar cells) that turns biomass to plastics precursors to plastic to ski boots? Maybe, but it'd cost so much to start that it's not worth it. NREL can make jet fuel and probably other things out of plant waste, and I just saw a paper where somebody made a catalyst that cleaves plastic polymers into a narrow range of small molecules which could be used for new plastic. The tech is there or at least in its infancy, somebody with money just needs to step up and industrialize the process or pay for the research needed to do so.

Perhaps there's other materials but is their manufacture simple, or is it something that isn't quite green and so doesn't count? A material made from corn mush doesn't count if I generate half a ton of toxic sludge per ton of new material. And arguably unless we're running off a nuke plant, it also doesn't count if I consume a small city worth of electricity to make 10 boots.

 

[SendyMcSendyface]

Interesting idea. But on the individual level, it would just make more sense to buy whatever boots fit you, and spike some trees in exchange.

 

[Will.Wright]

Problem is that plastic is just so damn good for ski boots.

I think what matters more than the materials used is the product life cycle. If a pair of boots lasts 5 seasons rather than 1 then that’s going to make a bigger impact than going through 5 pairs made of whatever eco material in the same time.

On one of the Gear30 podcasts the dude from Atomic made the point that loads of ski boots can be fully recycled. Would be cool to see more brands focusing on that, providing incentives for people to send back their old boots when they do need replacing to be recycled.

 

[OregonDead]

good fitting boots will last a long time. I think that is the key. Also the boot manufacturers do use recycled plastic to some extent when they can do it without affecting performance

 

[tomPietrowski]

That is a big part of how we are evolving at K2 currently so we are being pushed for what we can do with both K2 and Full Tilt.

Certainly the fact that boots are plastic is challenging but we are finding there is actually a lot of new tech which is really interesting when it comes to reusing materials. For example there is a company that recycles fishing nets into plastics. The hard part when it comes to boots is finding plastics which are high enough quality to be used.

There are other areas of interest too though. Foams, for example in liners, are an area where we are looking into new greener options. There are some interesting things happening with organic materials which can be used for foams.

Rubber used in soles is another area where there is new green innovation happening, you will see this in snowboard boots soon.

End of life is another area we are looking at, basically what can happen to the boots after they are finished being used. There are some interesting options here such as regrinding the shells and using that for 3d printing filaments. So we can 3d print the new prototypes from old recycled boots.

So its certainly happening, it just takes slightly longer to get to market then what you see in the apparel industry for example. Its also happening in all departments here and I think you will see what we have planned in skis sooner rather then later.

**This post was edited on Nov 4th 2020 at 3:17:38pm

 

[ZappaStache]

Scarpa makes a T2 Eco. Drop your knee and save the earth brother

 

[FaunaSkis]

I’m sure [tag=134699]@onenerdykid[/tag] will jump in and be able to share more on it but for Atomic’s boots that are black and made from PU, a proportion are made using recycled plastic from the mis-injected boots at the start of a production run. He talks about it with Jonathan on the Blister podcast here (@ 19:18)https://blisterreview.com/gear-101/a-very-deep-dive-on-ski-boots-part-1-plastics-ep-54

the whole series is good for a nerd out on ski tech if you’ve a few hours.

 

[jps2.0]

Atomic made a recycled plastic boot a while ago called the atomic renu

 

[onenerdykid]

Atomic made a recycled plastic boot a while ago called the atomic renu

That was 10 years ago now, and it wasn't just recycled - it was as carbon neutral as you could get.

This is obviously a big theme now and for good reason- this should be on the radar of every skier wishing to play in snow. And as skiers, this has always been super important to Atomic, with our boots and with our environmentally-focused ski factory (fun fact: it uses the excess heat generated from making skis to heat the town of Altenmarkt), and we will continue to look at all possible ways in which we can do more here. And believe me, it's happening.

Being able to use our resources wisely is just the smart thing to do. It's super important for all of us as skiers, and every brand should be thinking about how to bring new ideas to the table here. We should applaud any brand making legit inroads here.

 

[jps2.0]

That was 10 years ago now, and it wasn't just recycled - it was as carbon neutral as you could get.

This is obviously a big theme now and for good reason- this should be on the radar of every skier wishing to play in snow. And as skiers, this has always been super important to Atomic, with our boots and with our environmentally-focused ski factory (fun fact: it uses the excess heat generated from making skis to heat the town of Altenmarkt), and we will continue to look at all possible ways in which we can do more here. And believe me, it's happening.

Being able to use our resources wisely is just the smart thing to do. It's super important for all of us as skiers, and every brand should be thinking about how to bring new ideas to the table here. We should applaud any brand making legit inroads here.

what's the best way to dispose or recycle old boots?

 

[onenerdykid]

what's the best way to dispose or recycle old boots?

The plastic and metal components are recyclable, the liner usually isn't since it's a lot of foams and fabrics that are glued together (recycling centers usually aren't able to deal with that kind of stuff).

So if you clean the boot, disassemble it, separate the plastic parts & the metal parts, you should be able to take them to your local recycling center no problem.

 

[ZappaStache]

what's the best way to dispose or recycle old boots?

I usually just stick my old boots in the cupboard to use as beer mugs, cereal bowls, flower vases and much much more

 

[DrZoidberg]

The plastic and metal components are recyclable, the liner usually isn't since it's a lot of foams and fabrics that are glued together (recycling centers usually aren't able to deal with that kind of stuff).

So if you clean the boot, disassemble it, separate the plastic parts & the metal parts, you should be able to take them to your local recycling center no problem.

What type of plastic are they anyway? PU or HDPE?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41929-020-00519-4

Not that everybody has access to Nature Catalysis, and not that this isn't an extremely technical article, but these guys were able to feed HDPE to their catalyst and chemically upcycle it to useful small molecules. It'd be cool to see plants devoted to such a process in the future as it's completely circular and will keep things out of landfills. I would imagine PU is a bit more difficult as it's arguably a more complex molecule than HDPE, but I'm sure somebody's working on it. I like to imagine such a thing will be a lucrative business in the future.

My understanding of current mechanical processes is that the material sort of loses quality, if not reputation, as it is continuously recycled and so manufacturers want virgin material, or will mix recycled with virgin material. Chemical upcycling mostly goes right around that issue.

 

[clorox]

Hemp plastic ski boot would be pretty cool.

With Carbon fiver poly carbonate 3d print filament, it would be cool to make a custom boot using a 3d scan of a foot. Nylon could also be a good print option. Filament recyclers exist but I'm not sure you'd wanna run old prints with carbon through them.