Justin Ibarra /Special to the Daily
Weston Backcountry started as a company based out of Minturn, and has grown in recent years to become one of the world’s major ski and snowboard providers.
But in growing the brand, owner Leo Tsuo cites balance as one of his main focuses, and has set out to prove that being a profitable company can also be balanced alongside equitable treatment of workers, care for the community, and care for the environment.
Those tenets — governance, workers, community, environment and customers — make up something called B Corp Certification, which is a designation businesses can attain to verify they’re “meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials,” according to bcorporation.net.
To achieve certification, a company must demonstrate high social and environmental performance, make a legal commitment by changing its corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and exhibit transparency by allowing information about its performance to be publicly available.
Weston was recently awarded B-Corp status, a journey that began years ago as the company started evaluating its carbon footprint. Weston hired Alex Blanchard as a sustainability manager and Blanchard, under Tsuo’s direction, examined the company’s production practices and made determinations as to how those practices could be improved to be less carbon-intensive.
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Blanchard said one of the easiest things the company could do would be to move to sea shipments from air shipments, which are roughly three to four times as carbon-intensive as sea shipping.
The change added time and expense to Weston’s operation, but that was OK by Tsuo.
“We pursued B-corp for balance and posterity,” Tsuo said. “We want to be part of a solution where the pursuit of protecting the planet, providing for our people, and sustaining profits are not at odds and can be in balance.
Tsuo said B Corp provided “a robust and progressive framework for which to build on and also ensures the organization’s DNA is encoded in the pursuit of this balance.”
One of many
Within the ski industry, there has been a recent push for more companies to attain B-Corp designations.
Patagonia was among the first companies in the outdoor industry to sign up for B-Corp certification back in 2012. It then went on to provide instruction to other companies on how to do so, as well.
Burton became a B-Corp company in 2020, and Faction Skis, FW Apparel, United Shapes, WNDR Alpine, MPOWERD, Mountainflow Ecowax have all attained B-Corp status, as well.
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Taos Ski Area — with its chairlifts and snowmaking operations powered by daytime solar provided by Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, and its electric snow groomer and fleet of nine Taiga Motors electric snowmobiles — has been certified B-Corp since 2021.
Blanchard says as companies who are in the business of capitalizing on snow, B-Corp status is a commitment to recognizing a simple truth.
“Without snow, we can’t exist,” Blanchard said. “Sometimes the more sustainable option is not necessarily the cheaper option.”
Material interests
Weston, in recent years, has taken a hard look at what goes into its boards, and what can be done to use materials that are better for the environment.
The company, in recent years, has switched to using castor bean oil, rather than a petroleum-based product, in the creation of the top sheets on Weston snowboards and skis. Because castor oil is biodegradable, and obtained from non-edible crops which can be grown on land with little agricultural or industrial value, it is considered the winner among renewable alternatives to non-renewable petroleum products.
In Weston’s first snowboards, beetle-kill wood was milled to the proper width and thickness and glued together with strands of poplar wood for the board’s cores.
But it didn’t have much structure because the pine from the beetle kill is not a very strong wood. In looking at alternatives, old-growth tree options exist, but that does not fit the company’s ethos.
In 2021, Weston partnered with Vernan Kee, a Dine (Navajo) artist who lives in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, to support the National Forest Foundation’s Wood for Life program, which transports biomass wood from National Forest thinning operations to Navajo and Hopi populations that previously relied on coal for home heating. The harvested wood sustains homes during difficult winter months. Kee’s art appeared on Weston’s Mission Series skis and snowboards, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Wood for Life program.
With all of this background in wood harvesting in mind, Weston is now dedicated to using farmed wood only — no old growth — in its board cores, and outside of the core, the company uses renewable flax fiber instead of carbon fiber, which creates lower carbon levels during production.
And finally, Weston implemented a four-year warranty on its snowboards in the interest of one of the most bedrock philosophies of sustainability — the longer you’re able to use your product, the better it is for the environment.
“B Corp certification serves as a testament to the work we’ve done, but also is an incredible resource in our pursuit of doing better,” Blanchard said. “While this certification is the cumulation of years worth of work, it’s also only a first step in our journey.”
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December 27, 2023 at 03:34AM
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Eagle County ski industry company to attain B-Corp status - Vail Daily
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