13916677:K-Dot. said:
Libtech actually seems to give a shit about their environmental impact unlike just about every other ski brand, ON3P included but correct me if I'm wrong.
It's embarrassing that a sport that relies entirely on incredibly fragile climates is fueled by brands who don't give the slightest shit about their carbon footprint and subsequent contribution to climate change.
Mervin's dedication to lowering their environmental impact is great and it is good someone at their size brings attention to it. We don't have their marketing arm nor do we have their economy of scale, though we do what we can. I'll run through what they do and how it would compare to ON3P.
We can get the easy ones out of the way.
http://www.mervinmade.com/#map
Here are areas we're current similar, based upon their marketing materials on environmental initiatives.
1) Water Based Sub Ink (aka no oil - same at ON3P)
2) Lov VOC Resin System (aka not terrible epoxy - same at ON3P)
3) Water Power - I believe what they are referring here is wet grinding. This keeps contaminants out of the air and obviously makes a much nicer working environment for customers (same at ON3P).
4) Recycle all wood scraps (Same at ON3P). All our saw dust is collected and is donated to a horse farm for bedding. All of scrap bamboo is recycled and picked up by local builders who use it to build a variety of small consumer products.
5) No Toxic Lacquers - these are used to seal topsheets - (We don't use anything like that - so same at ON3P).
6) Eco Woods - on our end, the Bamboo we use has about a 6 year growth cycle, vs about 30 years for comparable hardwoods, which is of course a benefit. Downside is we have to get it from China, so there the negative of transport. There are people trying to grow similar bamboo stateside, but the climate here is likely not conducive enough to allow the bamboo to grow big enough for our function. We keep an eye on this but no real movement on this in years from what we've seen.
7) Zero hazardous waste - again, same here. We're pretty tame in this regard, thankfully.
Here is what is different:
1) Bean Plastics - We have no access to it and from we've been told, their use is limited.
2) Recycled Sidewalls - Again, from what we've been told, limited in use. Most of their sidewalls I believe come from Crown Plastic - same supplier as ON3P.
3) Bio Topsheets - I don't enough here to say definitively how
pervasive their use in across their whole production line, but I've never seen a supplier we can buy bio topsheets from.
4) No toxic solvents. Technically we do use one solvent - Acetone - to clean oil off our edges and at other general tasks around the shop. We've actually reached out to Mervin to see what they do and explored other options, but from what we've seen, they get away with no solvents but literally just not cleaning things we clear here. As our brand is build on quality, and we don't have the scale to produce many skis with issues, it is paramount that our ski parts of clean when they go into a ski. Solvents like acetone are the best way to ensure that is the case.
5) Windpower - We're actively looking into carbon buy backs and other options that are practically for a high overhead, low margin business like ours. Wind isn't something we've found much on. In the consults we've done, it seems the easiest way for us to address this sort of approach was thru carbon buy back. We have a local consultant who helps answer questions on this and once we feel we are in a comfortable financial spot to do so, this is something we will address.
6) Recycle Plastics - this is the big one where they kick our ass. We've tried for years to recycle plastic waste. We have bags and bags and bags of it still stashed up high on pallets racks waiting to see if we can find somewhere to recycle it. We've even talked to the same company that recycles Mervin's plastic, but as Mervin is substantially larger than us, they have economy of scale to make it practical. We've been told we are too small to do so.
We tried other avenues on plastic. We've explore even repacking the plastic waste as other products - for example, making bean bags out of plastic off the CNC (we have samples here) - but the weight of the plastic is too heavy for us to transport them affordably (they are so heavy they are hard to even move).
So that is the discussion based upon the list Mervin includes to talk about the environment. The other thing we preach is just overall waste. Our skis last longer than other brands - particularly the skis that aren't slamming rails all the time (park skis are what they are). As such, an ON3P customer is going to need less skis over the life of their skiing career. That is less manufacturing waste, less manufacturing energy, and less ski waste at the end of the skier's lifecycle.
While we might not preach or market much of this, you would be wrong to assume we "don't give a shit" about the environment. We do what we can with the options available to us. As those options increase, we will reassess and do more. We are in manufacturing, so there is always waste, but we factor in the environment in ways that are practical for a business our size.
