Although it has been eight years since Salt Lake City dispensed itself well as the host of the 2002 Winter Olympics, the city’s travel and tourism portfolio continues to benefit handsomely from the highly valued visibility of this global event as evidenced in previous Selective Echo posts here, here and here.

“We have an opportunity every time the Winter Olympics comes around to be reminded of the impact on our community. There is no better stage than the Games themselves to remind the world what they discovered about Salt Lake when we were the host city,” says Scott Beck, resident and CEO of the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau (SLCVB). “Our brand as a legitimate world-class convention destination was born out of the Olympic experience, and our brand as a destination for world-class winter recreation was solidified at the same time.”

And, Utah’s industry will be well represented at the Games which begin Feb. 12 in Vancouver. The visit is hardly trivial. The group’s branding message remains simple yet definitely resilient. Each of the three cities (Salt Lake City, Park City, Ogden) has greatly benefited from hosting the Olympics, as shown in these three lasting legacies: growth in Utah’s tourism and convention industry; numerous world-class athletes now calling Utah home due to the state’s incredible sports infrastructure and, perhaps the most important legacy, the tremendous economic growth and prosperity enjoyed by the three destinations.

Recognized as one of the state’s eight key economic clusters, outdoor tourism and recreation’s economic development has seen many outdoor recreation companies relocate or expand operations in Utah, including Rossignol, Descente, Amer Sports, (parent company of Salomon, Atomic, Suunto).

“The 2002 Winter Olympics helped establish Snowbasin and the Ogden area as a prominent winter destination. That recognition has lead to an influx of visitors and winter sport enthusiasts eager to experience and take advantage of our area’s offerings,” explains Sara Toliver, president/CEO of the Ogden/Weber Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Equally important is the impact on our economic development. After discovering Ogden, many outdoor recreation-based businesses have relocated to the area as a result of our easy access to recreation and our quality of life.”

The overall numbers bear this impact out:

The legacy for Utah’s tourism and convention industry:

VISITORS — 20.4 million visitors in 2008 vs. 17 million in 2000(

UTAH SKIER DAYS — 4.259 million in 2007-08 vs. 2.984 million in 2001-02

INDUSTRY — $7.1 billion industry (2008) as compared to $4.25 billion prior to hosting the Olympics (2000)

JOBS — Responsible for 113,030 jobs (2008) vs. 100,674 in 2002.

“We have watched our hospitality product and its utilization grow significantly since hosting the Games,” says Bill Malone, president and CEO of the Park City Chamber and Visitors Bureau. “The popularity of Park City as a vacation destination has soared with the instant credibility afforded the community by hosting 26 medal events and being deemed ‘The Alpine Heart of 2002.’”

Malone adds, “With the community having embraced Alpine, Freestyle and Snowboarding World Cup events over the many years leading up to the Olympics, this has produced a pipeline of young athletes aspiring to become Olympians, many of whom will be competing in the Vancouver Games.”

In Salt Lake City as in an increasing number of cities across the country, networks of backyard growers in urban neighborhoods and small-scale farmers along with nonprofits like Seed Savers Exchange and Native Seeds/SEARCH as well as Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste have helped to preserve rare heirloom varieties and other agricultural jewels through public seed swap events.

SLC’s People’s Market, in conjunction with Wasatch Community Gardens, will presents its fourth annual seed swap Saturday, Jan. 30 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Sorensen Unity Center (1383 S 900 W). The event gives farmers and horticulturalists the opportunity to share seeds, grow heirloom crops and keep their genetic stock healthy.

“If you have seeds left over from last year, bring them. If you have no seeds, come and you shall receive,” says People’s Market founder Kyle LaMalfa. “Bring your friends, trade your seeds, and expand your garden space with variety. This is one of our more popular events throughout the year, and we’re looking forward to seeing many new faces.”

The seed swap event has become a good platform not only for growers to start work on their gardens, plots, and fields for this year but also to exchange gardening tips, anecdotes, tasting notes, and recipes. Among the most critical types of information available include how individuals can save seeds, become caretakers for the varieties they use in their gardens, and work to keep varieties genetically pure and strong.

Carly Gillespie, WCG’s community educator coordinator, and Allison Parks, development and outreach coordinator, will conduct seed-starting demonstrations, answer questions, provide gardening literature, and swap seeds themselves.

Slow Food Utah also has selected numerous varieties from the U.S. Ark of Taste catalog that should propagate successfully in Utah and has purchased many of the seeds in bulk. The group will distribute sampler packets of seeds to participants at the Seed Swap. Slow Food USA’s catalogue includes more than 200 foods that have laid dormant in production but are being rediscovered gradually in networks located where varieties are best suited for cultivation.

“Wasatch Community Gardens is thrilled to co-sponsor the People’s Market Seed Swap because they share our vision of strengthening community through gardening,” says Claire Uno, WCG’s executive director. “We hope to see a lot of people at the Seed Swap seeking inspiration to diversify the colors and tastes of their garden this coming year.”

WCG joins with People’s Market each year to support the Seed Swap, build community, promote gardening, enhance food security, and encourage people to think of market gardening as a viable entrepreneurial activity.

Light refreshments also will be served including soup, crusty bread, cookies, water and soda.

For more information about the Seed Swap, see here.

When it started in 2007, the Outdoor Industry Association’s (OIA) Eco Working Group quickly learned that an industry-wide index measuring environmental sustainability in, for example, product development, manufacturing, and packaging should be easy to read, flexibly modular in scope so that small and large companies alike could apply the guidelines, and sufficiently detailed to address consumer demand for eco-friendly products and vendor quality control requirements.

A couple of epiphanies became readily apparent in the process that brought together more than 140 representatives from more than 80 companies in the outdoor recreation industry. There are no perfect metrics and whatever metrics are used, they should help tell ultimately the story to a consumer who wants to know just how much energy or water went into manufacturing the new pair of trail runners he or she just purchased and if the packaging for those shoes is effectively biodegradable.

“The initial feedback we got was that the draft guidelines were too confusing and cumbersome,” says Ken Stone, a member of the working group and product development manager at Black Diamond, an outdoor equipment manufacturer in Salt Lake City. “Through many iterations, we eventually came up with a set of documents that keeps the end consumer in mind and looks upstream into the supply chain.”

The guidelines are readable and accessible (e.g. five pages for the materials guidelines and three for packaging); as they should be for an industry mindful that proactive voluntary compliance hopefully will serve well as many companies increasingly find their organizational responsibilities go deeper into the supply chain not only with issues of environmental sustainability but also with those involving labor rights, fair trade and internationally recognized quality control standards.

Many of the more than 16,000 participants in the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market, now running at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center in downtown Salt Lake City, will get a solid look at the materials and packaging guidelines that are part of the comprehensive ECO Index which the OIA will formally unveil in August.

The index – comprising guidelines, metrics, and indicators – will be a web-based, user-friendly tool with an a la carte approach that small startups of three employees or multinational companies with thousands of employees in different locations will find equally instructive and applicable, Amy Roberts, OIA’s vice president of governmental affairs, says. “The underlying assumption is to understand that no company could realistically achieve a perfect score but the intent is to make it operationally effective so that we can keep moving the bar upward and forward through the next few years.”

And, Roberts explains the index’s rollout is appropriately timed as the industry expects domestic and international governmental regulations to increase especially on environmental and labor practices. “Hopefully, we’ll be in a proactive position to demonstrate real-life examples that are being implemented and lead to workable standards without the need to make regulations unnecessarily cumbersome and which avoid the punitive economic effects for potential violations.”

The guidelines also reflect existing brand-neutral standards wherever possible so that companies can comfortably leverage research and practical experiences achieved in and out of the industry. Stone notes the group was acutely conscious of avoiding any superfluous, costly duplication of efforts that could confuse retailers and consumers in the end. In fact, each of the guideline sheets will include the following template language:

“[A]re qualitative principles and management practices, intended to be used as an educational tool, promoting continuous environmental improvement for companies and suppliers. They are intended to be more general in nature and provoke thought, further research, and questions. It is each company’s responsibility to apply these Guidelines in a way that is meaningful to their products and business.”

Stone says the working group’s process was consistently open and collaborative and the result is that many companies comfortably can adapt these guidelines to their own internal framework of management and operations. Roberts agrees, adding the Salt Lake City session will include panelists who already have implemented these guidelines. For example, Black Diamond has moved to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified paper for its in-house manufactured product packaging.

In 2009, Novara Cycling, which is REI’s cycling brand, focused on eliminating unnecessary dunnage and maximizing the environmental impact of unit load capacities on containers. This included a pilot program incorporating Novara bike tubes into a shrink-wrap design that eliminated 98 percent of material used in previous designs. Novara bike accessories also are being customized with 60 percent less material than what was previously used.

Wisely so in keeping with the fundamental objective of making the index guidelines as flexible and as approachable for as many manufacturers and retailers alike, consumers will not see a reductible certifying score or comparable standardized “seal of approval.” The index’s breadth and depth are extensive with guidelines focusing not only on materials and packaging but also forthcoming documents on matters of transportation logistics, end of product life cycles, and manufacturing processes as well as metric lenses on toxicity of chemicals, waste, biodiversity, and land, water, and energy use. The index’s framework not only is conceptualized upon the interests of corporate accountability for environmentally sustainable practices but also those for branding and marketing decisions as individual companies see fit for reaching out and educating their core consumers.

For more information, see here.