Outdoor Retailer
One of the country’s biggest outdoor retail shows has just wrapped up in Denver, the Outdoor Retailer Show. This is a show that connects brands with the newest of style, technology, and products with retail stores hoping to fill their shelves with the hottest items. Your favorite blogger (The Fatman) was able to score a media credential so I will be talking to some of these brands and passing on the information to you over the next few days. Also, a special thank you to all the brands that took the time to talk with me and give me permission to take pictures of their products at the show. Today is a look at companies that help you be more environmentally minded.
Do it Yourself Environmentally Minded
If you have been following along you know that yesterday I told you about environmentally minded companies. Those companies went the extra steps in their processes to be environmentally minded or gave back. Today I want to talk about some of the brands that I found at the Outdoor Retailer Show that are helping the consumer be more environmentally minded.
Got Bag
Got Bag is a bag company that has several sizes of bag from travel to hip bag and even wallets. What makes Got Bag unique is the way that they produce the bags that they sell.
Got Bag has a partnership with over two thousand Indonesian fishermen. When the fishermen pull their nets along with the catch they have a lot of unusable plastic that they have cleared from the ocean. Got Bag then takes those plastics and sorts and recycles them. The usable portion are broken down into yarn and then polyester fabrics which they turn into bags. Each bag clearing almost ten pounds of plastics from the ocean. You can read more about the process here.
Tree Free Fire
Have you ever wanted a fire while entertaining guests on the patio but don’t have or want to burn wood? Maybe you are looking to roast some marshmallows with the kids at the beach? Well, Tree Free Fire is your solution. Tree Free Fire gives you the open flame of a campfire without the hassle of building a fire.
Tree Free Fire uses peat moss and organic, food grade soy wax. The scentless flame will last for up to 4 hours in its recyclable steel container. It is a great way to enhance your outdoor experience and the small canister is portable. It is an open flame that gets hot though so make sure, as always, that you follow all of the fire safety rules in your area.
Foot Hill – Bio White Gas
We never knew how much time we spent at restaurants until we couldn’t for a few months. Now that we are back all of those restaurants produce a lot of waste oil. Waste oil that is collected and refined and then turned into eco-friendly white oil from Foot Hill.
As well as coming from recycled waste oil, the white oil from Foot Hill is 100% renewable and uses more than 50% less carbon. It is a recycled and cleaner for use in fuel oil cooking stoves.
Opolis Optics
There has been a lot of talk about plastics and their negative impacts on the oceans and landfills. Now ask yourself how many times you have broken or lost a pair of sunglasses. What if those sunglasses would biodegrade in a landfill in 115 days instead of 400 years? That is where Opolis Optics comes in. Opolis uses bio materials such as hemp, red mulch and cottonseed plants derived bio-acetate. That difference is what makes Opolis sunglasses a different and more environmentally minded sunglass company. You can read more about that process here.
Opolis isn’t stopping there either. They are working on what they call a stoked plastics line which which uses recycled PET (the stuff in plastic bottles and floating in the oceans) for a new line of sunglasses. You can read all about the stoked plastics plan here.
Gear Hugger – Plant Powered Lubricant
Gear Hugger has come up with solution to petroleum lubricants. Think of the oil on snow mobile and bike chains. If you are spraying that oil on the chain near the trail that petroleum could spray off and onto the trails.
Gear Hugger has found a plant based lubricant technology. Their lubricants are USDA bio-based 96% which means that 96% of the ingredients are made from renewable or plant based products. You can learn more about this eco-friendly lubricant here.
Gear Hugger‘s founder was kind enough to give me a demonstration at the Outdoor Retailer show that you can see below:
More From the Fatman from Outdoor Retailer
It is great to see these companies working with sustainability and the environmentally minded approach with their products. I will have more from the Outdoor Retailer show, including more about environmentally minded companies, over the next few days. Make sure to check back with Fatmanlittletrail.com for all the latest updates. You can also see my previous Outdoor Retailer posts as well as my product reviews here. If you would like a fun look at my outdoor journey, you can find that here. You can also keep the conversation going on social media by following me on any of the below platforms. Happy Hiking!