Kelty is making two significant “green” moves this season. Kelty will switch to paper derived from sustainable forestry practices for their print catalogs, and will shift to 100%wind power for their Boulder headquarters.
“These are small steps in the big picture of environmental stewardship,” said Kenny Ballard, president of Kelty. “But as we continue to make these types of changes– as a company, as an industry, and as individuals theres no doubt we can have a much larger impact.”
The wind power will provided by Xcel Energy, the nation's leading purchaser of wind power, with 1,048 megawatts of wind-generated electricity, according to the annual industry ranking report released March 15, 2006 by the American Wind Energy Association.
The Xcel Windsource program is available in Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota, and ranks number one in total number of customer participants (nearly 50,000) by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in its annual ranking of leading utility green power programs.
The sustainable paper stock is known as Gusto: an acid-free, archival-quality paper that is domestically produced in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. It is comprised of hardwood fibers from sustainable forests in both North America and Europe.
The term “sustainable forestry” generally refers to an actively managed forest, in which timber or other resources are harvested at a rate or level that can be sustained indefinitely by the land.
Rather than the toxic elemental chlorine typically used to process the pulp, Gusto is processed using “oxygen delignification,” a system which significantly reduces the negative environmental impact. The end result is a paper product that is completely recyclable, where facilities exist.
