Sustainability | Snowbasin Resort
Energy efficiency, waste diversion, maintaining a healthy ecosystem on the land on which it operates, free employee transportation, guest carpool parking and reducing water consumption are all hallmarks of the sustainability efforts and operations at Snowbasin Resort.
At beginning of 2022, this former Olympic-venue mountain resort launched an environmental advocacy and education program so creative and innovative that the National Ski Areas Association rewarded it with one of its highest recognitions for environmental stewardship, the Golden Eagle Award for Innovation in Sustainability.
The program that made Snowbasin stand out amid stiff competition from across the North American ski industry is Sustainability Sundays, created with the goal of increasing education and driving a culture of sustainable actions on the mountain. During these biweekly events, held on the resort’s base area plaza from January through the end of the winter season, guests are encouraged to play fun and engaging games created to educate them on three primary sustainability topics: waste diversion, responsible transportation and general sustainability. Environmentally friendly prizes—like reusable cutlery sets and lunch boxes—were used to incentivize participation and create good-spirited competition. “Some of the more popular games included waste diversion bingo and the digital sustainability scavenger hunts that led guests around the resort in search of answers,” says Kayla McFarland, Snowbasin Communications Manager.
Snowbasin also used Sustainability Sundays to bring awareness to the resort’s environmentally friendly offerings/practices, such as how season pass holders can buy a UTA bus pass for just $10 each winter. “By actively educating our guests about this deal through Sustainability Sundays, bus ridership increased by more than 80 percent from the 2021 season to the 2022 season,” McFarland says.
The success of Sustainability Sundays was also measured by the event’s week-over-week participation numbers. Twenty-eight guests participated in the first Sustainability Sunday. Following creative and consistent marketing and social media campaigns, along with encouraging staff to get the word out, participation jumped by nearly 296 percent by the end of the season.
Regarding their choice to recognize Snowbasin as part of its 2022 Golden Eagle Awards, the NSAA award selection committee had this to say: “Snowbasin realized that many employees and guests don’t know much about sustainable habits. People know they should recycle, not how to recycle; they know they should choose products and transportation responsibly; they just don’t know how to do so. In today’s info-saturated world, Snowbasin sought to cut through the clutter with something new and engaging ways to increase education and drive a culture of sustainability across the resort.”
For more about Snowbasin’s sustainability efforts and policies, visit snowbasin.com/the-mountain/sustainability.
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