The most effective way to do this and profit from it is to perform an environmental audit. For most people, audit is a disquieting term, but an environmental audit isn’t designed to find out where you need to pay more, but rather to take stock of what you have and determine where you can profit and save costs. It’s also a tool to help resorts tie into the emerging environmental marketplace.
The audit works like this: First, it details a resort’s previous environmental work and outlines existing successful programs and policies. Then it identifies areas where operations or services are currently taxing the environment. Finally, a list of issues, practices or fixes is created showing the costs associated with each. From that list, a resort can determine what changes will require significant funds and what can be achieved relatively quickly and inexpensively.
It may be that a current staff person can complete the audit, yet sometimes it makes sense to hire a planner for the assignment, which begins with a detailed tour of facilities and departments with the auditor looking for places where efficiency can be improved. Everything from electrical use in the kitchen to water use by snowmaking crews needs to be evaluated. After the physical examination, the gathered information is generally studied in conjunction with bills and departmental expenditures, with an eye toward trimming waste and costs as well as determining how efficiency can be increased from department to department.
The return on investment will reveal itself in the audit’s final report, showing actual and potential savings as well as increased profits. Those green dollars will be realized in one of four categories: evolving services, products and practices; operational controls; or new markets and innovation.
Changes to Make
Some tangible examples of cutting costs by altering day-to-day operations include the use of low-energy light bulbs, programmable thermostats and placing machinery that generates waste heat in basements and venting their heat to the floors above. A thorough energy audit might also lead to reducing product inventory to free up storage space needed for other uses.
Savings can also be generated by changing employee practices. For example, tuning machine maintenance can be altered to use less-toxic products to produce less waste and cut down on disposal costs. And the practice of leaving grooming machines running during breaks for extended periods might prove to be a waste of fuel as diesel exhaust is pumped into the air.
Resorts can also save or make money by entering elusive new markets. Some areas might profit from the re-sale of wood-burning permits. In regions where air quality is threatened and wood-burning stove installation requires a permit, resorts that already own or want to buy permits can make a market for these permits while promoting clean air. By promising to eliminate one of every two permits procured and then re-selling the permits at a premium, the resort can add to the bottom line while promoting environmental stewardship. Other methods of entering new markets include selling organic wastes to companies that burn the material for fuel or make compost.
Some resorts have already found value in the environment and are successfully navigating these new markets. Aspen Skiing Company, for example, has recently released its version of an environmental audit as the company’s first-ever “Sustainability Report.” The report details what Aspen will do to correct some of the environmental issues the resort creates. In fact, Pat O’Donnell, president and CEO of Aspen, has found that by establishing a baseline and mapping the company’s environmental future “we are finding a balance between environmental responsibility and economic viability.”
An important lesson to be taken from the Aspen example is one from which every resort, regardless of its size, can benefit. All practices that save energy or reduce pollution should be publicized. It’s easy to let customers know, yet it might be more important to tell the community as a whole. It might just help change their image of how the industry treats the environment.
The avenues for realizing savings are many and an environmental audit can help customize a program to do that. It’s like custom-fitting a ski boot: getting maximum performance out of what already exists.
Brooke Hontz is an environmental specialist at Jack Johnson Company and teaches skiing at Deer Valley Resort, Utah.
