Snow of Tomorrow 1 2025/26 | Skiing in Circles - Part I

The world is drowning in garbage - literally and very much figuratively too. Obviously this is mainly due to textiles and other waste, but there’s a whole lot of skis, boards, boots, helmets and poles out there that eventually end up in a landfill or incinerator. Or if they’re lucky: as a DIY bench in some skibums shared flat.

According to the WINTRUST Project, a whopping 1.8 million pairs of skis and ski boots, 2.3 million pairs of ski poles and 1.4 million helmets were sold in Austria alone within the last five years. That’s enough gear to equip every visitor to the resort of St. Anton next winter. Add equipment sold in the rest of Europe and other big markets such as the Americas and Asia sold over longer periods, and you end up with massive amounts of gear. In today’s system most of these end up thrown away once they’ve shredded their last shred, although options for extending the lifetime of the products and individual materials do exist.

Circular Economy – a circular solution to our garbage problems?

“Reduce, reuse, recycle”, the three basic R’s of circular economy that everyone knows. However, there’s a lot more to circular economy than just those three R’s -  you could even go up to 9 R’s if  you’re feeling adventurous. Simply put, circular economy is an alternative to our current take-make-waste linear economy, where resources are used to make products which at the end of their life then get thrown away. A circular make-use-renew model aims to eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials, and last but not least, regenerate nature. All of this is pretty important since increasing resource use is the main driver for the triple planetary crisis – that’s climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Skiing around in circles

So, what does all this talk about economic models have to do with skiing or being an owner of skis?

Since producing skis uses resources and results in products that will eventually reach the end of their lifetime, circular economy can be applied to skis too. That naturally means snowboards, boots, bindings, helmets and poles as well. Parts like steel edges, wood cores and various laminates would all be better off being reused rather than thrown away or burnt after your skis hit a few too many rocks in the sharky snow of dry winters -  or worse, after just simply going out of style. Unfortunately reusing or recycling parts from skis and boards isn’t that easy, but we’ll take a deeper look at that in the next article.

There are actions each and every one of use can take to make owning skis and equipment more circular. Not buying a new pair of skis just because there’s a new print available, maintaining and servicing your equipment, not losing your helmet on the bus, getting things repaired, buying equipment 2nd hand, renting and sharing instead of buying – you get the picture. While individual actions are important and contribute to the bigger picture, the industry also needs to step up. This includes setting up proper recycling systems, finding materials that are less harmful and more recyclable, incorporating circular thinking into the design process of products, using renewable energy and eliminating toxins in the production process, maybe questioning if it’s necessary to release the same product with new prints every year– just to name a few. The WINTRUST Project pretty much agrees about the recycling system part, and they’re the leading snow sport equipment recycle experts in Austria at the moment:

“In order to improve this situation, it is necessary to establish separation, processing capacities, sales markets, product applications and process technologies for recycled materials.”

Snow sports gear won’t flood beaches like plastic bottles or fishing nets - snow sports equipment are luxury articles after all - but why not try to set up a system that is as circular as possible? Especially in a sector dependent on urgent climate action to stay alive.

What’s next?

Are there already circular solutions out there on the snow sport market? Why is the market still a direct line leading old equipment into the landfill rather than a perfect circle where materials get used again and again? These are themes that will be dived into in the second article of the series. Stay tuned.

To finish things off, here’s a message from the gang at the International Resource Panel:

“It is no longer whether a transformation towards global sustainable resource consumption and production is necessary, but how to urgently make it happen.”