It's a wonderful thing when a beautiful place is entrusted to those that care. Sugar Bowl Ski Resort is owned and managed by a passionate group of people that love the mountains and are committed to maintaining the natural beauty for generations to come. Read on about our progressive use of 100% green energy to power the resort, our participation in the "sharing warmth around the globe" program, the special care we take with our forest, water supply and our planet.

Sugar Bowl places a high value on our natural surroundings, and we realize they are our greatest current and future asset. We will help set a superior standard for the industry and our community by consistently implementing environmentally sound policies and practices to improve and maintain the quality of our environs.
Sugar Bowl's commitment to environmental responsibility goes hand in hand with our obligation to provide a safe and quality experience for our guests as well as maintaining an economically viable business.

• Conserve natural resources and when feasible implement alternative, environmentally friendly sources of energy.
• Employ policies that reduce waste of all materials.
• Plan, design, and complete projects using practices that have the least impact on natural surroundings and habitats.
• Engage in short and long-term restoration and mitigation of surrounding landscapes.
• Reduce, and whenever possible, eliminate water and air contaminates.
• Encourage guest and employee participation in our environmental mission by making available the appropriate tools, training, and educational opportunities.

Sugar Bowl is proud to be a founding member of the Sierra Green Building Association (SiGBA). SiGBA’s mission is to promote effective environmental design in our communities by:

• Advocating resource efficiency in all phases of the design, construction and operation of homes and businesses.
• Providing educational resources and support in the areas of site development, energy, building materials, air, water and waste.
• Coordinating networking opportunities and community events.

SiGBA’s vision is to lead the Tahoe, Truckee, and surrounding Sierra communities into a new sustainable era. Through Green Building, we can design and construct our built environment to function symbiotically with nature. More Information

Environmental Contact: Jennie Bartlett

Sugar Bowl is also the only ski resort in California to go with 100% green cleaning supplies. Moving into the 2007/08 season Sugar Bowl has gone “totally green” by committing to purchasing and using only green cleaning products, expanding the installation of energy efficient light bulbs and signs, and installation of water saving shower heads through out the resort.

Sugar Bowl’s employees are doing their part by reusing and refilling all cleaning supplies through the resorts Base Area Maintenance shop. The newly installed green cleaning supply station has been a huge step in maintaining Sugar Bowl’s commitment to using 100% green cleaning products. The resort continues to stock and place paper, glass, aluminum, plastic, battery, cell phone, and printer cartridge recycling bins for general office use. Sugar Bowl has also dedicated time in their employee orientation specific for educating employees on how to recycle at Sugar Bowl.

Sugar Bowl employees are a group of dedicated, passionate people. Last year employees banded together to cooperate with NSAA's "sharing warmth around the globe" program. This program distributes retired ski resort uniforms and high quality winter clothing to those in need throughout the world.

Sugar Bowl employees are also committed to the environment around the resort. Sugar Bowl is in our eight year of the Adopt a Highway and Donner Summit beautification project. Lead by the resorts environmental committee, employees spend a number of days maintaining the area around Sugar Bowl. Employees are also encouraged to pro-actively reduce, recycle and re-use. Annual training and periodic safety meetings focus on the practical aspects of recycling.

Sugar Bowl's Environmental Committee consists of management and employees who are dedicated to global cooling and the Sugar Bowl environmental principles of implementing best practices, assessing environmental performance, and setting goals for improvement in the future.

Environmental Contact: Jennie Bartlett

Sugar Bowl Ski Resort is committed to environmental sustainability. In partnership with 3 Phases Energy we are now supporting California wind farms by purchasing renewable energy to offset 100% of our energy use. This purchase reduces Sugar Bowl's consumption of fossil fuels, cleans the air, and keeps greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere.

This 4,272 megawatt hour (MWh) per year purchase reduces our consumption of fossil fuels, cleans the air, and keeps 4,588,000 pounds of greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere each year. This is equivalent to planting 310,000 trees or taking 400 cars off of the road for one year.

Sugar Bowl has joined forces with Clif Bar to take a stand on Global Cooling. Every time we use fossil fuels to drive our cars, heat or cool our homes, even grow and cook food, we create greenhouse gases. Excess greenhouse gases accumulate in the Earth’s atmosphere and cause an unnatural build-up of heat.

But there’s hope — with your help we can make the world a cooler place. By using energy more efficiently and by helping to build new sources of clean energy — we can slow global warming. And it’s easier than you might think. To find out more about Clif Bar's efforts towards global cooling, check out clifbar.com

Global Cooling is at the top of the list of environmental concerns for Sugar Bowl and reducing carbon dioxide omissions is our focus. Great effort is made to help reduce traffic flow to the resort and promote high occupancy vehicle travel. Following is a summary of the costs of these efforts.

• Employee and public shuttle service is provided from Truckee and Donner Summit. Approximately $69,600 in direct costs to promote and operate the Truckee and Summit Shuttle. Approximately 326,000 Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) were avoided this season through the Truckee Shuttle Service.
• Approximately $76,000 to maintain and keep open old Highway 40, significantly reducing the number of miles traveled to reach us from Truckee and eastern locations.
• Carpool parking incentives offered to day visitors.

Environmental Contact: Jennie Bartlett

The SaveOurSnow.com website which launched in Summer 2006 on the single issue of climate change in ski resorts has seen its first major content update since its launch.

The independent site compiles the conclusions of scientific reports from around the world on how climate change is likely to reduce snow cover in mountain areas around the planet as well as polar regions.  It also records the efforts ski resorts are making to minimise their impact on the environment.

The site update includes:

• News archive featuring more than 100 news stories on climate change issues.
• More ski areas awarded the maximum five stars for offering the most carbon neutral ski holidays, including the first Southern Hemisphere and North American resorts.
• More holiday companies offering greener ski holidays.
• Site feedback from our first six months.

"Winter 2006-7 has seen an explosion of effort by ski resorts worldwide to minimise their environmental impact and tour operators are also trying to do more", said site compiler, ski writer Patrick Thorne. The most visible improvements have been in the US where ski resorts were already leading the country in their environmental efforts. "Now many of the leading resorts have switched to renewable energy sources and there are many other imaginative initiatives." Sugar Bowl Resort in the Lake Tahoe Region was the second resort in the US to go with 100% Green Energy consuption. Those efforts combined with their extensive recycling, transportation initiatives, errorsion control programs and employee efforts has earned Sugar Bowl SaveOurSnows coveted 5 Star environmental rating!

With the limited snow cover and record warm temperatures in Europe and until recently Eastern North America, SaveOurSnow has been receiving a lot of high profile media attention in Europe and North America.

"There is a lot of onus in mainstream media on ski resorts to do more, but having looked at the overall issues in detail for some years now I believe that many ski resorts are operating to the highest green standards. I believe a greater share of the joint responsibility lies with individuals to do more in their day to day lives to minimise their contribution to climate change and for governments to do much more to help us all in that goal. Ski resorts are more victims than cause of climate change in the mountains", said Thorne.

Contact:
Patrick Thorne
Email Questions
Save Our Snow Web Site

Sugar Bowl proudly endorses the National Ski Area Association's Environmental Charter known as Sustainable Slopes. Essentially, this means that Sugar Bowl commits to practicing and demonstrating environmental protection and stewardship. The Environmental Charter provides a framework to implement best practices, assess environmental performance, and set goals for improvement in the future.

Here are some ways Sugar Bowl has implemented these principles:

• Became the first ski resort in California to convert to 100% of energy requirements to Wind Power through the purchase of Green Energy credits.
• Implemented a resort wide recycling and recovery program for office paper, cardboard, plastic drink containers and aluminum.
• Recycle used motor oil, solvents and antifreeze.
• Cash incentives to promote employee carpooling and shuttle bus ridership.
• Subsidies paid to promote the Truckee Trolley connection to the Summit community.
• Provide local Summit transportation system.
• Employee clean-up days.
• Surface and ground water quality monitoring program.
• Parking lot storm water runoff collection, oil separators and sediment ponds utilization pursuant to our Storm Water Pollution Protection Plan.
• On hill revegetation, winterization and stabilization projects.
• Elimination of all oil burning heating systems and associated storage facilities.

How you can help:

• Carpool or take advantage of Sugar Bowl's free shuttle from Truckee.
• Turn off lights when leaving a room.
• Reuse bath towels and linens to conserve energy and water.
• Reduce cafeteria waste - use washable silverware and use dispensers rather than individual packets.
• Use a reusable mug or cup whenever possible.
• Dispose of waste properly - recycle!
• Reuse or recycle used trail maps (We have provided more mountain maps on the ski hill!)

To view the 24 page Environmental Charter document or for more information on this program, please visit www.nsaa.org

Environmental Contact: Jennie Bartlett

Water quality and erosion control are important areas in our environmental policy. We have seeded the run-off prone areas of the ski hill and re-vegetated the base area with native wild flowers. Preserving water quality at the resort is a priority; water on the mountain is protected using straw bales, waddles, re-vegetation & silt fencing.

Snowmaking activity is conducted in a manner that protects minimum stream flows and is sensitive to fish and wildlife resources. Snowmaking is performed with the utmost care and conservation using water from our own Lake Mary. This lake is maintained and stocked to ensure marine health.

Sugar Bowl has installed oil separators and sediment ponds for parking lot storm water runoff collection; wells were also installed as part of a surface & ground water quality monitoring program.

Erosion Control
Sugar Bowl has a full time summer staff dedicated to erosion control and re-vegetation projects. This past summer’s projects have included water bar repair and construction, slope reseeding, tree planting, and extensive irrigation. Additional efforts include limiting or prohibiting motorized vehicle traffic in sensitive areas and ongoing education of our staff and customers regarding our “treading lightly” philosophy.

Environmental Contact: Jennie Bartlett

In 2006, Sugar Bowl reached a milestone of 300% improvement in recycled materials since we began aggressively pursuing our waste reduction efforts 6 years ago.

In 2002 Sugar Bowl was awarded the largest grant ever in California to promote beverage container recycling and overall recycling awareness in the recreation industry. Each year, our recycling efforts increase with measurable results.

In 2006 Sugar Bowl began working with Sierra Cost Management to further our efforts in conservation including:

• Installing additional beverage container collection bins in all public areas and at major events.
• Divert all batteries, fluorescent bulbs, cell phones, printer cartridges and other universal waste to centrally located collection buckets.
• Restrict purchase of disposable food service items to compostable or #1 or #2 plastic
• Initiate training for all employees and homeowners regarding new recycling and conservation programs.

Sugar Bowl is excited about this partnership with Sierra Cost Management. It is estimated that during the first year, we witnessed an increase in recycling poundage of 5.7% resulting in waste reduction and cost savings!!

Sugar Bowl and the California Department of Conservation

Environmental Contact: Jennie Bartlett

Velocity7, a marketing communications firm in the Sierra Nevada has launched a mini-site with information on how Sierra Nevada residents can take daily action to preserve, conserve and learn more about the place they live.

“When the opportunity came up to do a series of banner ads, we were up to our elbows in research and work on Sierra Nevada-related projects. It seemed like a good time to make a statement about the place we live while sharing with others what we are learning about conservation. We hope to inspire others in applying their talents for environmental good.” states Velocity7 CEO, Robert Trent.

The series of seven banner ads focuses on vital areas of Sierra Nevada ecology—water, land, air, salmon, land-use, fire and local economies. “Seven for the Sierra is about inspiring action, using traditional marketing tools in an unconventional manner.” says Velocity7 Marketing Manager, Pamela Biery. Art Director Marlisa Fisher adds, “This website playfully suggests real, immediate actions. Adding John Muir Laws illustrations helped us to keep this feeling going while adding depth.”

Find out more by visiting www.sevenforthesierra.com . Want to add these educational banners to your site? Call 530.470.9292

About Velocity7 Velocity7 provides integrated marketing communication solutions. Learn more about their services and nationally recognized clients by visiting: www.velocity7.com or call 530.470.9292.

The Sierra Nevada Conservancy Board of Directors voted to accept the design for a new Sierra Nevada License Plate at its Regional Meeting on March 13 in Mariposa, California. The final plate design was based on the artwork of Sierra Nevada Conservancy logo design competition participant, Orion Day of Sonora. Velocity7 adapted Mr. Day’s artwork to the license plate, which includes a brown bear, blue creek, green pines, and mountain peaks— important symbols of the Sierra Nevada range.

The Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) 2007 Logo Concept Design was open to students grades 9 through 12 in the Sierra Nevada Region. Sugar Bowl sponsored this event with free one-day tickets the first 100 qualified entrants. Over 200 students entered. Orion Day’s artwork placed and also received honorable mention.

A new requirement for specialty plates requires 7,500 license plate registrations prior to issuing this specialty license. The Sierra Fund is managing the marketing of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy License Plate. Velocity7 worked under contract for The Sierra Fund to establish a marketing campaign. Once this program is in progress, proceeds from the sales and renewal of Sierra Nevada Conservancy License Plates fund the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s efforts to protect and restore the 25 million acres of majestic landscapes in the Sierra Nevada.

For more information on the Sierra Nevada Conservancy License Plate visit: www.thesierrafund.org



About Velocity7 Velocity7 provides integrated design and marketing communications with a green twist. Services include marketing communications, web, branding, print, public relations, advertising and media planning. 530.470.9292 www.velocity7.com