The Winter Wildlands Alliance created the Backcountry Film Festival in 2005 to help grassroots and professional filmmakers to show audiences their love of the winter outdoors. Since then, the annual festival has become something of an institution amongst many outdoor communities.
The festival is now a pre winter event here in Australia.
Shows start this month: with screenings in Melbourne and Sydney in May (and other areas later in the year).
Check here for details.
An interesting idea: Swap your old clothes, and share the story. At Patagonia Sydney , April 23rd.
For further details: https://www.facebook.com/PatagoniaAustralia?fref=ts
Image: Fuji Batteries
While rechargeable batteries are always going to be best, I thought I would post this recent announcement about Fuji’s ‘EnviroMAX’ battery.
This information comes directly from the company, so no external verification. No details given about working conditions in their facilities but there are some detailed environmental reports available on their website.
The materials that make up a Fuji EnviroMAX battery are derived from the basic elements of the Earth. There is nothing inside a Fuji EnviroMAX battery that will harm the environment if it is disposed of through normal waste systems. A few reasons why are that Fuji EnviroMAX batteries contain no harmful mercury, cadmium – nor are they packaged with dangerous (and non-recyclable) PVC plastic.
Instead, Fuji EnviroMAX batteries are made in some of the world’s most eco-respectful battery plants, operating under some of the most strict standards of environmental responsibility. In fact, most of all resources used in the Fuji EnviroMAX manufacturing process are reused and recycled! What’s more, Fuji EnviroMAX batteries are labeled and packaged with recycled paper and P.E.T. plastic. The result is batteries that meet a world standard for environmental responsibility and recyclable materials. And no other batteries are so respectful of our environment as Fuji EnviroMAX.
This piece comes from The New York Times, the author is Christopher F. Schuetze.
Douglas Tomkins. Image: http://es.latintrade.com/2009/10/ambientalista-del-ano-douglas-tompkins-protector-de-la-tierra/
BARCELONA — Sustainable entrepreneurship — a buzzword in an increasingly eco-conscious business world — is often described as a balance between profit and environmental impact.
It’s a subject that Douglas Tompkins seems to have thought a lot about. He founded Esprit and The North Face, two of America’s most iconic clothing and fashion brands, only to quit the business world to become a staunch conservationalist, environmentalist and critic.
“Remove ‘sustainable’ from your dictionary, there is no sustainable business. Only biological sustainability counts,” he told a room full of business students at the IESE business school Doing Great and Doing Good conference on responsible business. (Disclosure: I moderated a panel at the same conference).
“Economic activity has impact and we are just now doing a better job of measuring what those impacts are,” said Mr. Tompkins in an interview.
A strict conservationalist, he rejects the idea that big business can reform itself and thinks the answer lies outside what he calls the “techno-industrial culture.” He thinks measuring biodiversity is a yardstick for how society is doing.
“Healthy biodiversity is at the base of everything,” he said, with species extinction being the ultimate catastrophe. “We’ll be living on a sand heap with a Norwegian rat and a few cockroaches at the end.”
Despite having co-founded ESPRIT, the multinational clothing giant, and The North Face, the maker of outdoor equipment, in the 1960s and having earned millions of the sale of the former, Mr. Tompkins is critical of business’s paradigms.
“We have an economy that’s based on growth without limits,” he said. “How is that possible?”
“To grow and grow and grow without limits is out of the question,” he said.
Even the companies that he is famous for launching do not escape his disapproval.
“My two companies are two monsters now,” he said.
His conversion from fashion to conservation work took place around 1990, however Mr. Tompkins still retains his sense of simple beauty.
“If we just use the aesthetic rule of thumb of saying if it looks bad, it is bad and if it looks good, it – probably – is good,” we’d get a lot further than with arcane and complex economic theories.”
But Mr. Tompkins is much more than an anti-business theorist or a conservation advocate. In the last two decades he and his wife have managed to conserve land that will ultimately enlarge or create national parks in Chile and Argentina.
Mr. Tompkins started his drive toward conservation and reclaiming natural habitat in 1990, right around the time he had sold his share of Esprit for a reported $150 million. (He sold his interest in The North Face much earlier in his career and at a much lower price.)
To date, he and his wife have bought up 1.1 million hectares (or almost 2.5 million acres) in South America, through several of his conservation foundations. The land conserved or in the process of being restored, is open to public use, with conditions, until it is donated to the countries’ national park systems. (My colleague Larry Rohter visited Mr. Tompkins in 2007 and wrote about the political implications of an American buying up so much land in Chile.)
Besides their work restoring land for parks, the Tompkins are developing sustainable farms (he doesn’t like to call it sustainable, just less unsustainable) in both Chile and Argentina.
At Laguna Blanca in northeastern Argentina, the Tompkins have bought and reconstituted land for a sustainable farm project.
Organic crops are planted using small-scale methods not in square plots, as is common in commercial farming, but following the contours of nature. Passages for wildlife are integrated into the fields.
The farm products are then sold to the surrounding community, with profit going toward his conservation efforts.
This is an update on the story posted below. It seems that the wetsuits will be available by late next year.
In mid-November, Patagonia announced that after a four-year search for a material that would reduce the environmental impact of its wetsuits, it was officially releasing suits made from Yulex, a bio-rubber made from the Guayule plant.
The suits, which are a partnership with Yulex Corporation, are being rolled out on a limited custom basis starting in Japan, but Patagonia has much larger plans for the material. First they’re planning to make Yulex suits available in the States next fall, and then they’re hoping to make them available in the suits of every other brand across the industry.
For details on the process, please check here.
Please note, this information has been taken directly from Patagonia.
As reported in Transworld Business:
VENTURA, Calif. and PHEONIX, ARIZONA (November 16, 2012) — Patagonia Inc., a leading designer of core outdoor, surf and sport-related apparel, equipment, footwear and accessories, and Yulex Corporation, a clean technology company developing agricultural-based biomaterials for medical, consumer, industrial and bioenergy products, announced today the introduction of a guayule-based wetsuit, a renewable biorubber that is the first alternative to traditional fossil-based Neoprene.
“When we started to build wetsuits we knew that neoprene, by nature of its production, was the most environmentally harmful part the product. Our initial approach was to use innovative materials, like wool, that are highly insulating and allowed us to use as little neoprene as possible.
But we quickly realized that we needed to create a new material that could be a true alternative to neoprene,” notes Jason McCaffrey, Patagonia’s surf director. “After four years of working together, Patagonia and Yulex have co-developed a unique material that allows us to make a wetsuit that is 60% guayule (plant) based. Our goal is to have the formula be 100% plant based, but we feel that for now this new material is a big enough step forward to let the world know it is possible to buy something cleaner. This is just the first step; it’s our hope that other brands see this as interesting and join the effort to innovate and implement alternatives to traditional neoprene that is used in wetsuits.”
Yulex’s biorubber material is made from guayule, a renewable, non-food crop that requires very little water, is grown domestically in the US, uses no pesticides, and in comparison to traditional neoprene, has a very clean manufacturing process.
Initially, the new suits will be available in Japan only. In Spring 2013, surfers will be able to order custom suits out of Patagonia’s wetsuit facility in Ventura, CA, with a global rollout to follow.
“Yulex commends Patagonia for supporting the advancement of a sustainable, low-carbon future by embracing agricultural-based, biomaterials to replace petroleum-based synthetics,” said Jeff Martin, CEO, president and founder of Yulex Corporation. “Patagonia is guiding the action sports industry to a new level and setting an example for the importance of sustainable practices. Yulex views this partnership as a major step towards a future where use of our renewable, guayule based biomaterials is the industry standard for consumer, medical, industrial and bioenergy products.”
Outdoor magazines can get a bit obsessed with gear and new stuff. All the latest bikes, skis, boards, clothing. Flow magazine is a new, home grown entry to the rather crowded mountain bike scene, and its refreshing because it focuses on the people that are riding, without getting too obsessed with the latest carbon fibre frames.
Issue one is on sale now and has a feature on ‘why we ride’, with a series of reports on road trips and non pretentious profiles on ‘average’ MTB riders and clubs. I love the one about a truckie from Albury.
Chris Southwood and Mick Ross from Sydney are the co-founders of Flow Mountain Bike. It’s clear they are riders themselves and bring a lot of their passion for their sport to the magazine. And while it has some great photos from overseas, it has its sights set on Australia and what our terrain has to offer riders.
There is a review and contact details available here.
