Last Saturday, I was hauling my bike and carcass up a fire road approximately 12,500 feet above the altitude I live — and 12,400 feet above the altitude my lungs wanted to be. For some reason, the very limited operating capacity of my brain wasn’t focusing on cadence, or gear selection, or even the view. Nope, there I was in the middle of the Leadville Trail 100 fixating on a gel wrapper that I’d seen dropped on the trail.
The impact that our outdoor fun has on outdoor spaces shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s not just the wrappers we leave, or the trails we erode, or even the carbon we generate flying around the country to have fun outside. The gear we use also has a huge impact on the planet we enjoy.
During my 100-mile mountain bike misadventure, I had ample time to consider the ways we can reduce that impact — and broadly break them down into three categories.
The first is simply buying less stuff, which might mean spending more money, but hopefully less often. How many charge cables or pairs of headphones have you tossed in the past five years? Well they are all in landfills now, possibly being pulled apart by kids for the wire inside, permanently damaging their hands. The second is buying used stuff or stuff made consciously to reduce its impact: you might want those color pop trail shoes, but that dye might mean your grandchildren don’t have trails to run on. The third is limiting the waste from what we do burn through, recycling gel wrappers or using a reusable bottle instead of a disposable one.
Of course, most of the change has to come from all of us, changing our everyday habits. But in the spirit of supporting people who do things right, I wanted to assemble a short list of companies who place a high value on sustainable practices. That way, when you do buy new gear, you can vote with your wallet to support the kind of outdoor future that you want to see, hopefully one without gel packets on the trail. And yes, on the way back down I picked it up.
1. GU/Terracycle
3 photos
So, what could have happened to that gel packet? GU has the answer. It could have become part of anything from a bike rack to a trash can. Through the TerraCycle website, GU users can request pre-paid labels to ship back packets once they’ve slurped all the sugary goodness out of them. “We accept all competitors’ trash, any sports nutrition packaging,” says Bridgette Travis, GU experiential marketing manager. “This should be helpful for race directors, especially if they are concerned about stepping on the toes of their nutrition sponsor.”
