Over the last few years repair, re-use and recycle have become the mantra for The Boot Lab. We have a passion for making sure products are used to their full potential and that they last. This focus we placed on products led us down the pathway to something bigger and we began to analyse our entire business, looking carefully at all the parts we could adapt to reduce our environmental impact.

We’re now part of the Collective at “One Tree at a Time“. We’ve taken their pledge and we’re committed to changing The Boot Lab’s environmental impact.

There are three key areas of focus to the pledge:

Greenhouse Gas Reduction

By analysing and understanding our carbon footprints we can find ways to cut our emissions. The pledge looks at transport, renewable energy, wastage and recycling.

Plastic and Waste Reduction

The Pledge focuses on removing plastic from the day to day running of alpine businesses. Switch to non-plastic options, put pressure on suppliers to reduce their packaging and select brands that have less packaging.

Sustainability and Education

Working with brands that share a sustainable approach to their business model. Whilst helping to Plant a million trees to offset some of our emissions.

We are the first chalet company to take the pledge and want to lead the way in making a difference. We hope to set a tried and tested template for other chalet companies to follow to help reduce their own carbon footprint. We feel very passionate about this Pledge and planting more trees personally so it is time to lead by example.

We aim to Recycle, Re-use and Educate

The “Fix It” tour was an event that we ran last winter. It encouraged people to repair, reuse and recycle their ski equipment. It was a huge success and through the event we fundraised enough to plant over 50,000 trees. The most positive outcome though was to see people start to change their habits and we have received regular updates on how we’ve changed the way people think about their ski equipment.

What is the Focus now?

We really want to ensure that our business is run on carbon neutral electricity. We’re currently researching where our energy comes from, and it’s a bit of a mine field. France consistently generates over 90% of its electricity from low carbon sources. If you want to see how your country is doing there is a fantastic website called electricity map that delivers live electricity supply information for each individual country.

Recycle your old boots.

Ski boots are plastic. There’s no getting away from that but now there’s a few things we can do to help reduce their impact. For the 2023/24 season Nordica have created a ‘recycle your boots’ scheme to try and help reduce the environment impact of throwing away your old plastic ski boot. That doesn’t mean we think you should bin your old pair and buy some new ones but at least when it gets to that point you can just drop them off with us and we can make sure they end up in the right place.

Here’s what Nordica have to say: https://www.nordica.com/global/en/recycle-your-boots