Clint Eastwood’s iconic Dirty Harry character uttered “A man’s got to know his limitations” but can say the same thing about the Green progress of a company? In the case of the smaller and less capitalized Lake Tahoe ski resort Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort we looked at skied, snowboarded, walked, and peeked around at what Green goings on here at this resort. Like all ski reports they should be concerned about their carbon footprint and global warming because with no snow they have no business.

Sierra, unlike some of the larger resorts like Heavenly, don’t have as much capital to spend on LEED certified buildings, high output photovoltaic systems or biodiesal powered snow-cats but then again they have a smaller footprint in terms of actual buildings (LEED or otherwise) or the amount of high energy snow making machines.

In truthfulness Sierra’s green initiatives don’t have that “wow” factor but that doesn’t mean that they ignore the green philosophy. Under there PROJECT: GREEN SIERRA they have instituted many educational, community and environmental programs. Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort works local school children to collect plastic bottle tops in exchange for a free day of skiing and snowboarding. The collected plastic tops will be recycled into new bottle tops by Aveda™ in their Caps Recycling Program.

In terms of using the green thumb for building, Sierra “saved” their sister ski area Northstar from creating more landfill when they rescued the doors and installed them at the Grandview and Base lodge. They also used recycled material to rebuild the roof-top decks above their main lodge and above Grandview Lodge. On the below side, they replaced carpet in the main lodge with a carpet that is 25% recycled and contains 100% recycled backing. We have to like that carpet has Cradle-to-Cradle certification.

Speaking of recycling, Sierra makes a point to use 100% eco-friendly disposable products for all their restaurants. All plates, bowls, cups and flatware come from renewable sources such as sugar cane, potato starch and corn resin. When trying to be somewhat progressive with their recycling program unexpected things occurred. Next to their blue recycling bins they labeled their garbage bins “landfill” because that’s where it ends up. Skiers and riders, feeling guilty by not wanting to create more landfill, started tossing everything into the recycle bins. We had to laugh too. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. People in this region just need to be educated that a half eaten chili burger can’t be recycled. Now, Sierra needs to look at compost bins.

A lot of times it comes down to what you don’t do that can be classified as Green. Sierra only uses four snow guns which use a ton of energy and they have no condos. Their changes might seem small scale to many but at least the changes continue. We hope that soon Sierra will implement some major alt energy source, change their menu to more organic local based cuisine (although they do offer free Wednesday wine tasting from three local winemakers), and work on their water conservation efforts. When they accomplish some of sustainable ideas then it will really “Make my day”.