Environmental Manager

Vail Resorts, Colo.

Six-word bio: "I'm only staying for one season.”

You know you like your job when get married where you work.

Environmental Manager

Vail Resorts, Colo.

Six-word bio: "I'm only staying for one season.”

You know you like your job when get married where you work.

Last year, Adam Bybliw said “I do” to his fiancée on the slopes of Vail, in one of his favorite places, “Parker's Deck.” It was, he says, one of his favorite moments in his 10-year career at Vail.

“Getting married in a place that I love so much was the highlight of the time I've spent here,” he says.

Bybliw first came to Vail on a whim, visiting a friend during spring break when he was in college. He liked it so much he pretty much never left, moving up from his first job at the resort as a lift operator, through grooming and outdoor operations in the summer, and finally, into his current positing as manager of Vail's environmental programs.

Vail Resorts has a fairly high profile environmental program, built around a corporate social responsibility initiative called Echo, which includes environmental initiatives, charitable giving and employees. Has also sat on the board for the Eagle River Watershed Council, dedicated to preserving and protecting the local watershed environment.

Bybliw's areas of focus at Vail are on Echo's environmental side, primarily on its recycling program, composting program and energy auditing and monitoring. In the winter, he says, managing the recycling program takes up much of this time—between 1,000 and 2,500 pounds of cardboard alone has to be processed each day during the winter—but it's also a good time to establish peak energy baselines so that in the off-season and summer months, he can examine areas of focus for reducing Vail's energy use.

Preserving and maintaining Vail's natural resources—and its use of them—has always been of interest to him, he says, and coming up through the operations ranks as he had done gave him a practical background in how to achieve those goals.

“I've always had a feeling of how to make Vail a sustainable place. I just knew that was an area that I wanted to get into and make a difference. Every day, when I go home, I feel that I make Vail a better place.”

Bybliw's dedication to his work, unsurprisingly, has not gone unnoticed by Vail's management.

“Adam exudes a tremendous passion for our environmental efforts, works with our community partners to ensure success of programs and actively participates in the overall Vail Resorts Echo program,” Jeffrey Babb, Vail Resort operations director, told SAM in his nomination of Bybliw. “He's an engaging young man who builds consensus with others through his always positive can-do attitude. I see big things for him in our company, or whatever avenue he pursues, in the future.”

Bybliw says his greatest achievement since he came into his role as environmental manager was getting the resort's composting program up and running.

“We were able to get an in-house composing system going, composing food scrap from five on-mountain restaurants. We use the composted material in the summer for the flower beds. It's been a huge success for us.”

Looking forward, Bybliw has a clear view of how he'd like to see things play out: keeping them exactly the same, only better.

“I'd like to see us doing this [running the resort] in a sustainable way, providing the same service in five to 10 years, but at less cost to the environment.”

—Katie Bailey

SEE ALL YOUNG GUNS 2011