For 10 years, Aspen Skiing Company maintained ISO 14001 Certification, a third-party assessment of our environmental performance.

We discontinued the audits in 2014, and therefore the certification, because the investment of time and money was no longer justified. We’ll continue to run the core of ISO, our Environmental Management System, in-house, focusing on measuring progress in key areas, including energy use (carbon emissions), political activism, volunteerism and philanthropy.

Aspen Skiing Company’s environmental program will continue to be called GREENTRACK. Our goals:

1. 25% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 from 2000 baseline.
2. Increase volunteer hours 20% in 2015 over 2,000 and target 25% utilization rate by 2017 generating 3,500 hours.
3. Increase locally sourced product use by 10% for all consumables in 2015.

To accomplish this we will:

1. Better incorporate sustainability into annual reviews by making it more formal, and including carbon and volunteerism metrics
2. Continue annual monitoring of progress using metrics of carbon, volunteerism, local purchasing and continue to hold annual review meeting
3. Incorporate Protect Our Winters logo into uniform and company messaging as a way to broadly integrate sustainability message without adding layers of management or bureaucracy.
4. Expand corporate education on sustainability around the POW logo with an emphasis on ensuring that employees understand our sustainability history and mission. This will include: department visits, Aspen U, actual training classes, and better integration of sustainability into all ASC conversations, just as broader departments are integrated into Aspen Skiing Company’s sustainability talking points.
5. Use the Facebook Sustainability page as a replacement for the Greenletter, and to deliver information but also create dialog with employees.

The Colorado Environmental Leadership Program encourages and rewards superior environmental performers that go beyond the requirements of regulations and work toward the goal of sustainability. To qualify as a Gold Leader, entities must have a clean compliance history, have in place a fully operational Environmental Management System, demonstrate past achievements and set continual environmental improvement goals.

Aspen Skiing Company participates in the National Ski Areas Association's Climate Challenge. This is a voluntary program dedicated to helping participating ski areas reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and reap other benefits in their operations, such as reducing costs for energy use.