Skiing is a sport that is particularly dependent on its environment. If there is no snow on the mountains, you can’t ski. Global warming is causing mountain ranges to lose their snowy covering, and it is getting worse as time goes on. Therefore, if you love the sport of skiing, you should be making every effort to reduce the environmental impact of your activities.

One way in which you can do this is to recycle your ski equipment when you are finished with it, either by selling it, donating it, or recycling it. Making new ski equipment requires energy and materials such as plastic and metal. Extracting and processing these materials takes a lot of energy, and the raw materials are in increasingly short supply. It takes a lot less energy to recycle old materials than it does to extract them from the earth. However, if you simply toss your old ski equipment in the bin, then the materials required to make new equipment will have to be sourced in this way, and you will also be adding to the problem of landfill. If your old ski equipment is broken beyond repair, the best way of dealing with it is to take it to an authorised recycling centre where it will be reprocessed into new raw materials.

Recycling does still require quite a lot of energy however, so if you think somebody else could get any use out of your old equipment, then it is more eco friendly to sell it on or donate it. You can sell ski equipment in a number of ways. Perhaps the easiest way would be to take it into a ski shop and see if you can sell it or get a trade in for some new equipment.

Alternatively, you could place a classified advertisement in a publication such as Loot, Scot-Ads, or your local paper. Local web services such as Gumtree or Craigslist allow you to place an advert for free that will potentially be seen by hundreds of people. The main advantage of advertising locally is that you will not have to package up and send your ski equipment to a buyer who may be hundreds of miles away, which can be fraught with problems and is not as eco friendly. However, if you don’t have any luck selling locally, you could always sell your equipment on an auction site such as eBay, a specialist ski site, or in the ads at the back of a ski magazine.

If you don’t fancy selling your gear, or want to do a good deed for the day, you could always donate it. Charity shops are always looking for donations, and would be particularly pleased to receive valuable ski equipment. Donating to a charity shop is easily the quickest and easiest way to get rid of old gear, but you could also try listing it on a local donations website such as Freecycle or Freeshare and have it picked up from your house by an appreciative local ski enthusiast.

Unless you are giving up the sport, then the chances are that you will be getting rid of your old equipment in order to buy something new. However, you might want to also consider the impact that buying new equipment will have on the environment. You may find that you are able to find exactly what you are looking for, for a lot less, on the second hand market, leaving you more cash left over to book a ski holiday with. At the moment, Alpine Elements are offering some terrific deals on ski weekends to resorts such as Meribel and Chamonix in the French Alps, and this could be the perfect way to reward yourself for your good deeds.