Promotion/02/04/2021

How Mammut wants to raise awareness for climate protection and greater sustainability

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Alice Martin has been working as Corporate Responsibility Manager at Mammut since 2019. Her focus is on the environmental and social challenges facing an outdoor company. In this interview, she explains Mammut's sustainable corporate goals and why the Swiss company is particularly committed to preserving glaciers.

The Aletsch Glacier is the largest and longest glacier in the Alps.

How did the idea for the "Together for Glaciers" initiative come about?

When we calculated our company's carbon footprint for 2018 in 2019, it quickly became clear to us on the CR team that we needed to set even clearer priorities with regard to our carbon footprint. Above all, we set out at that time to drive collaboration with business partners, consumers and the industry as a whole. Because as we all know, the fight against climate change is a task that can only be tackled globally.

What exactly do you want to achieve with this?

At Mammut, we have a 20-year history of sustainability, but for many consumers it is not understandable or tangible. That's why we in the CR team were looking for a solution to communicate this better. This is how the idea for the "Together for Glaciers" movement came about, with which we want to motivate people to act in a way that is less harmful to the climate in the long term. In this context, glaciers are a powerful symbol where the effects of climate change are very clearly visible. They provide a lot of emotional images and also evoke fond memories in us. I believe that this emotional, less abstract reference is a good way to reach people and motivate them to rethink. People should realize that they themselves are part of the solution. We want to make them aware of this and support them in finding a solution. That is the goal of Together for Glaciers.

Alice Martin, CR Manager at Mammut
Image credit:
Mammut Sports Group AG

How do you convey this message?

As a brand, we have many ways to implement and communicate this. On the one hand, we transport the message via our digital channels, the athletes, and the Mammut Alpine School, where we reach many mountain sports enthusiasts every year. We also work closely with the NGO Protect Our Winters (POW) and, of course, involve our retail partners and stores as points of contact with end consumers. In practice, we want to motivate customers to consume less and use their products for longer, repair them and take proper care of them. To this end, we have built up an excellent customer service for repairs in recent years and made a series of how-to videos for proper product care. We are also working on sensible and sustainable solutions for recycling and re-use.

What role does Mammut's Close the Loop campaign play in this context?

We have determined that the production of climbing ropes accounted for 14 percent of our carbon footprint in 2018. That is already enormous for a single product category. So we in the CR team thought about how we could improve the carbon footprint of the ropes. So we came up with the idea of using the material from the worn climbing ropes to make other products. After various tests in our R&D department, it was clear that we could definitely use the used polyamide ropes. Together with the NGO Protect our Winters, we installed collection boxes in climbing gyms and stores where people can dispose of their old climbing rope. We then recycled these ropes into Econyl nylon, from which we can produce new T-shirts, for example.

The Close the Loop T-Shirt is part of Mammoth's circular economy initiative and is made from high-quality recycled climbing rope. It was awarded the ISPO Award 2021.
Image credit:
Mammut Sports Group AG

Like the Close the Loop T-shirt, which also won the ISPO Award, right?

Exactly. Mammut designers have created the Close the Loop T-shirt, which is made from 100 percent ECONYL® recycled nylon. In production, we save a total of 67 percent CO2 emissions per T-shirt compared to traditional nylon production using raw materials from oil. For us, this success story embodies exactly what we want to achieve with Together for Glaciers. Together with our super-committed and interested customers as well as various partners, not only a project was implemented, but a movement was generated. The nine collection points at the beginning of the project have recently become 50. While this award honors us as a company, it belongs to the entire Mammut community and our partners for this reason.

At ISPO Munich Online, Mammut will be holding a Masterclass on Thursday, February 4, at 1:00 p.m. What can I expect there?

Here we will take a deeper look into our sustainability story and the movement "Together for Glaciers", which is mainly about the question: How can we motivate consumers to consume more sustainably? Using concrete examples, we will show how a brand can design communication in such a way that customers are emotionally involved. Then we can convey to them that they too can be part of the solution. At the same time the Movement is an invitation to the entire industry, suppliers, dealers, and partners to join us on this path. We will also go into detail about our "Close the Loop" initiative.

Learn more about Mammut in the presentation by CEO Dr. Oliver Pabst: "Mammut - Reinventing Climbing. Again." - Tuesday, February 02 17:35

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