The Freeride world tour commitS ITself to sustainable development !

The consequences of our current way of living leads to consider sustainable development as an evidence. The goal of this commitment is to set up more responsible events which care about the sustainable development and try to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Adopting such an approach seems natural in view of the challenges we face, especially for the Freeride World Tour, which is an organization active in a particularly fragile environment. Freeride skiing, perhaps more than any other sport, is directly threatened by global warming and its consequences.

Our organization recognizes the ethical obligation to consider the social, economic and environmental issues faced by the community of winter sports and the impacts that our events can have. The environment represents a key field on which we focus most of our efforts. We also aim to develop social or economic measures on the various projects we are in charge of starting with the FWT of course, but also on the FWT Club, the Juniors and we encourage the organizers of FWQ to take the same path.

Concretely, the FWT commit itself in the following manner :

Development of a strategy

To plan our actions over the long term, we have developed a comprehensive strategy in terms of sustainable development. This covers the main scopes of the sustainable development (namely Transport, Waste Management, Education & Awareness, Communication, Internal Management, Energy and Community & Ethics) and led to the creation of an action plan which includes all measures that will be undertaken in the coming season.

Consulting and partnership

To develop and implement this strategy, the FWT surrounded itself with various consultants and specialized organizations. Summit Foundation, partner of the Verbier Xtreme for over 10 years and partner of the FWT since its founding in 2008, is our most valuable partner. The Foundation is deeply involved in our approach and is at the root of many actions we develop. This is especially through the impetus given by Summit Foundation that the Environmental Commission of the FWT was created in 2012. This commission aims to define a strategy and to identify key actions. It also aims to bring together key stakeholders with a direct or indirect interest in the implementation and the conduct of this strategy for our organization.

Environmental studies

To guide our strategy and to better understand the impact of our events on the environment, we worked with the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in the course of the winter 2012 during which two students led a study called « Life Cycle Analysis » (LCA) of the Verbier Xtreme. This study aimed to assess the overall impacts of the event on human health, climate, resources and ecosystem quality. It provided us valuable information about our event, in order to make improvements and reduce its impacts on the environment. This study has shown that transport, and the transport of persons in particular, accounted for over 90% of the impacts associated with our event. We therefore focused our strategy on this issue for the 2013 season.