Finding the answer to this question is as complex as the issue of sustainability itself. After all, the issue encompasses both our mobility behaviour as alpinists, i.e. our personal CO2 balance, as well as our gear and clothing, in other words, how eco-friendly and socially responsible these are produced and how we serious we take it as consumers. Those who still believe that washing and waterproofing garments a lot, over-use an unsuitable product excessively or throws out a garment rather than repair it when the first sign of a torn seam appears is not acting in a sustainable way even if the product itself has been made in an eco-friendly way. One of the most important sustainability factors for products is their durability.
But let’s face it: We almost all buy more outdoor clothing and equipment than we actually need. Good gear and optimal, stylish functional clothing is great fun because the high functionality makes our activities in the mountains easier and sometimes even safer. And nowadays we also like to wear practical functional clothing in everyday life – hence activewear.

The mountains as a school for life

As of this year, mountaineering has been included in the intangible UNESCO World Heritage List. It has a long history of development and is much more than just a sport: it shows you what you are capable of and how you have grown over time. It always offers you new challenges and instant validation, or it can – sometimes quite literally – plunge you towards greater humility and tolerance. Mountaineering has a relaxing effect, particularly due to sustained physical exertion and focusing on one goal, and it teaches you to constantly take in and perceive your surroundings. You learn to appreciate the simple things in life, such as a cool sip of water from a wild stream, a hot sip of tea, biting into an apple or building your own snow cave for shelter. Frequent mountaineering increases your stamina, your ability to work in a team, your capacity to weigh up complex issues and to take responsibility. Decisions on the mountain you make together at best. Over time you will inevitably develop more confidence in your own abilities. Experienced mountaineers and guides have learned to take such complex factors as weather conditions, avalanche situation, route layout and time planning into account when choosing a tour and planning a route at home, to check these again and again along the way, to adapt the decisions if necessary and to always base them on the capabilities and physical condition of the weakest member of the rope team.

The freedom to go wherever I want

Reinhold Messner once said, “mountaineering is the freedom to set off wherever I want”. From winter right through to early summer, depending on the weather and avalanche situations, dedicated all-round mountaineers dash across the Alps for ski mountaineering, ice climbing or, if necessary, spontaneously from the north of the Alps across the weather divide to a more suitable destination on the south side of the Alps. Apart from the highly subsidised, well-developed transport network in Switzerland, where yellow post buses still travel to the last hamlets in the high valleys, uphill journeys by public transport are, even by today’s standards, difficult.

Climate change

Air travel is undoubtedly the most environmentally damaging form of travel. What if though, the person who flys to a distant mountain region to fulfil his or her dream and with it completely blows their yearly CO2 balance, spends the rest of the year with a small footprint? Say he or she uses e-mobility, has solar energy at home? They cycle to work every day, grow organic vegetables at home in their bee-friendly garden and reduce consumption by taking care of his or her equipment and outdoor clothing? Does this balance out the long-haul flight?.

Sustainability is not a condition, but a development process

Yvon Chouinard from Patagonia, the great Yosemite climber and adventurer, whom I had the pleasure of meeting personally in the 1990s in the Dolomites, was probably the one who influenced me most as an environmental activist and lateral thinker – through his thoughts on environmental protection, which sounded pretty radical to me at the time, and in the true meaning of the word “clean climbing” which meant not leaving a trace, which, in a nature reserve, for example, also called into question leaving a rappel sling behind (you have to be able to climb again! ).

Patagonia became the sustainability catalyst for the entire outdoor industry, later followed in what was downright impressive,  Antje von Dewitz the owner of Vaude. She pledged to sustainability in all areas and, like Patagonia, to this day, continues to trim it. And this despite the fact that the company founded by her father Albrecht had already launched a then visionary, cost-intensive and complex recycling program called Ecolog for pure polyester products in 1994, which (like that of Gore-Tex) had to be discontinued after several years for lack of sufficient product returns. It should be clear that this caused major turbulence for the medium-sized family business at the time. Antje von Dewitz, as a woman of conviction, dared to take action – despite her social responsibility for the company and the families of her employees. Some more sustainability pioneers in the outdoor industry are Mammut and Odlo, the first companies in the industry to join the Fair Wear Foundation, which controls socially responsible production in low-wage and emerging countries. Transparency and cooperation among outdoor manufacturers with regard to sustainable production and sales are now taken for granted.

Just do it!

The German Alpine Association and its youth organisation JDAV have been dealing for a long time with the question of how to travel in the mountains as a group or alone in the most environmentally friendly way possible and what would be necessary and sensible in the future: For example, suitable on-site rental equipment, a CO2-calculator for the entire mountain journey, a locker at the railway station that can be booked in advance for clean clothing or even a shower before the return journey, an app with all public and privately operated bus, shuttle and train connections in the respective region, subsidised train cards and a similarly good bus line network as that in Switzerland. In spring 2020, the DAV held a conference on this topic in Regensburg, under the motto “Just do it”. It’s exciting to wonder how much of the proposals will be implemented in concrete terms by the DAV and politicians. And, of course, every mountaineer can make his or her own contribution up until then and think about how to minimize his or her carbon footprint before every trip.

Similar topics in the Bergzeit Journal

• Vaude – responsible outdoor products
• Houdini Sportswear: Sustainable inspired outdoor style 
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