MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall Winter 2019

112 Originally conceived to keep sails dry in the 16 th century, wax has long been a player in the waterproofing world. STAY LOCAL Avoid flying as much as possible. Explore habitat close to home to cut carbon emissions and contribute to your local economy. Try cold weather activities like cross country skiing instead of heading to tropical destinations. Bonus points if you can get where you’re going on public transport or by avoiding non-renewable fuel powered vehicles (and of course carpooling!). BE FLEXIBLE Avoid overused and stressed natural spaces. Many popular areas are being negatively impacted due to the sheer number of people who want to visit (and Instagram, which carries its own environmental footprint in energy use). Maya Bay in Thailand is closed until 2021, here at home Quarry Rock and Joffre Lake are human traffic jams, while Wildflower Trail in California is indefinitely closed and Mount Everest has line ups to the peak rivalling a Beatles reunion. RENTOR BORROW If you go camping twice a year, it doesn’t make sense to buy a tent, sleeping bags, and other accessories that will get little use. Reach out to friends to borrow their equipment, or make use of the many rental services available. Avoid duplication of items—how many reusable water bottles do you have and really need? Nothing lightens the load on our planet more than avoiding new products, so sharing existing resources is key. REPAIR YOUR GEAR MEC and Patagonia, among others, have repair policies and services which can extend the life of your products for years, and relieve the burden of manufacturing new product. Repair is having a cool resurgence as people are creating interesting ways of DIY patching/sewing apparel, customizing gear and hosting repair cafés. Even your tech can get a new lease on life through iFixit.com. CONSIDER THE END OF LIFE OF YOUR BELONGINGS Donating sounds like a great idea, but the system isbroken,andonlyafewpercentoftheapproximately 150 billion garments produced globally every year end up being bought from a second hand source. When you’re finished with your gear, try to find a specific individual who can use it, or a local organization that keeps the products in the community out of demonstrated necessity. CHECK YOUR LABELS Non-renewable fabrics have replaced renewable fabrics, making up 73 per cent of the fibres produced. Those techy polyesters, sleeping bags, stretchy pants and breathable shells are primarily made from oil and oil byproducts, with microfibre shedding just one of the many issues. Look for sustainably-sourced renewable fabrics such as hemp, linen, GOTS certified organic cotton, and for technical fabrics, Lenzing brand Modal or Tencel. INVEST IN ALIGNED BRANDS . While enjoying the clean air and water on your hike or splitboard mission, don’t let the cost be the toxification of air and water where your gear was manufactured, or indentured labour to put it together. No products are perfect—to make anything, we need to extract raw materials from somewhere, someone has to assemble it, and it has to go somewhere when we’re done with it. Weigh the inevitable trade- offs according to what is available to you, and make the best choice possible. Choose brands that acknowledge and make an effort to address the social and environmental impact they have at home, in their place of manufacturing, and for end of life handling. GET INVOLVED WITH THE HABITAT YOU INHABIT. Cities are nature too, we just built stuff on top and around it. See what organizations are in your community to restore surrounding ecosystems and increase green space in your urban area. Even five minutes in a park has beneficial mental health effects, and allows those who aren’t able to leave the city to experience the benefits of being in nature while also providing habitat for pollinators and removing CO2 from the air. VOTE—WITH YOUR DOLLAR, WITH YOUR OPINION, WITH YOUR BALLOT. Find out where your local politicians and business owners stand on ecosystem protection, natural space preservation, species protection and waste handling. Not just at home, but in the world as well (as our offshoring of waste responsibility to South East Asia has been exposed in the past few years). As we work towards a post-disposable world, let’s try to put in government and business policies that take responsibility for the garbage we create. Individual choices, business practices and government policies all have a reciprocal and mirroring effect on each other, which makes what we use, buy, and advocate for at work critical to continue the momentum for healthier systems. LEAVE NO TRACE. It’s an old but worthwhile tenet to pack out what you put in and stay on designated trails. Keep in mind it’s not just you on that path, but you plus every other person who wants to have that experience. So even the small things will add up. TOP 10 TIPS FOR MORE REGENERATIVE NATURE EXPERIENCES