PACT Outdoors: 2024 Stewardship Highlights
Somehow a full year has passed. As we rush to the finish line only to start all over again in January, we wanted to reflect on all of the stewardship work we’ve initiated and supported this year.
At PACT, we believe that businesses can find a balance between profits, people and planet. It just happens to require a little more effort and some different ways of thinking about the problems and opportunities that we face.
That said, we didn’t just want to report out on our successes. We wanted to pair it with some real talk about what worked and what didn’t, and the challenges that arise from engaging in meaningful stewardship work as a small business.
Here we go!
“Doo” Colorado Right Year Two
If you follow us closely you know about the “Doo” Colorado Right program. It’s a grant funded effort between PACT, The Colorado Tourism Office and Gunnison Crested Butte Tourism (where we’re based). The program distributes poop kits to outdoor enthusiasts at key points of outdoor access to help ensure people are prepared to do their business properly.
This year we completed the second year of this program. We added a research component working with graduate students from Western Colorado’s Outdoor MBA program as a part of the Wright Collegiate Challenge to design a survey aimed at understanding user behaviors and the impact of the program. We added a social content component with a number of Colorado content creators to drive awareness. We grew our coalition of partners, including trail orgs, tourism orgs, land managers and more to around 36 organizations, and were able to distribute ~5,000 PACT Lite Kits to outdoor enthusiasts throughout the state.
We also took the program to the Outside Festival, where we distributed hundreds of Lite Kits to young, diverse outdoor enthusiasts in downtown Denver. The inaugural event was an amazing setting for reaching these often overlooked audiences and was well worth the effort.
The data from our surveys revealed that over 9 out of 10 people who engaged with the program are now more likely to carry a bathroom kit into the outdoors. This solidifies the belief that education is good, but tools are better.
The program got leaner and meaner this year, but required a lot more coordination and effort. Unfortunately, being that this is a grant funded program, it will be going away in 2025 in the interest of funding new projects, which we support.
Biggest Learning: These programs are incredibly helpful for users, and are good sources of promotion for our business. It also drove a ton of awareness about LNT practices (100MM+ media impressions). They also take a lot of time to implement during our busy summer season. We’re curious about what we can achieve with a tighter focus on marketing the business versus our programs this summer. To continue this type of work over the long-term, we have to continue scaling our business.
The Clean 14 Research Study and Pilot Program
We partnered with Penn State, Leave No Trace and Colorado Fourteeners Initiative to see if installing a kiosk at the Mt. Elbert trailhead to dispense “wag bags” or pack out poop kits would cut down on the amount of mis-handled poop on Colorado’s 14,000’ peaks. It’s a sort of “if you build it, will they use it” type of question that we called The Clean 14.
The study and pilot which will result in a peer-reviewed, published paper from PSU, uncovered some interesting things. Here’s a snapshot:
There’s a lot of people pooping on Fourteeners.
11% of hikers are pooping at or on Mt. Elbert. That’s about 1,650 poops per year. Only 30% of those people are using the vault toilet at the trailhead. The other 70% are pooping on the mountain. Maintaining toilets can be around ~50% of the USFS’ budget in some areas, and while essential they don’t meet the needs of most users.
People are open to packing out.
75% of hikers had heard of wag bags and packing out. But, only 38% have ever tried them. Only 8% said they wouldn’t consider packing out their poop. The awareness and openness is there already. It really comes down to trying the practice for the first time.
Yes, they’ll use them.
29% of hiker surveyed took a pack out kit from the kiosk. And, 30% of all poopers surveyed packed out with all but one relying on a free PACT Pack Out Kit. 79% said trying this practice makes them more likely to bring one in the future.
If you want to read more about the study, you can check out an article in Outside Magazine or read our more in-depth summary.
For PACT, this upcoming year is all about sharing this research with land managers and trial organizations far and wide, and trying to implement more of these programs to understand their impact.
Biggest Learning: People will pack out their poop if you make the process straightforward. The study demonstrates that many people are willing and capable of taking a larger role in outdoor stewardship. But, we’ve maybe relied to heavily on regulating people and not enough on empowering them by addressing their unmet needs in the outdoors. We believe we can achieve this with better tools and systems.
Working With Students and Higher Education
Real-world experience is one of the hardest things to come by among college students. It takes a ton of initiative and is very competitive. But, it’s perhaps the biggest thing that helps you to stand out after graduation.
Gunnison, Colorado where PACT half-based is home to Western Colorado University, one of our most consistent partners and supporters. We’re worked with engineering students to design and build new machinery for our manufacturing process. We guest lecture. We’ve partnered with Outdoor Industry MBA students on our “Doo” Colorado Right program above.
Another partnership is with Colorado Mountain College, specifically their Leadville campus where we employ an undergraduate researcher, Shelby Seitzinger. Shelby, with mentorship from faculty, is leading (yes, leading) our mycelium and mycoremediation research. In a dedicated lab space, graciously provided by the school. She’s helping us understand fungi’s role in pathogen reduction, decomposition and factors that help to improve its effectiveness.
Biggest Learning: Mycoremediation is a very new field and Shelby, an undergraduate student, is as close to the forefront as anyone. If that’s not proof that you’re never too young to start making an impact, we don’t know what is. Working with students takes time and mentorship but the results can be incredibly worthwhile. We feel like this type of partnership benefits all parties, and will look to expand it in the future.
Making Better Products
Funny that we save this one for last. Likely because it’s so obvious, we almost overlook it.
At the end of this year, we rolled out PACT Bathroom and Body Wipes. Aside from just being a better solution for toilet tissue in the outdoors, we’ve reduced a ton of the chemicals commonly used in toilet paper and conventional wet wipes. You can read more about the issues with TP and wipes here.
Our dehydrated, compressed wipes are FSC-certified so they come from responsibly managed forests. They’re also made of OEKO-TEX 100 Standard material, which means they are free of over 1,000 chemicals commonly found in textiles, including PFAS or forever chemicals.
Biggest Learning: Making more sustainable products can be challenging as a small business. It means higher costs for us, which puts us at greater risk if we don’t achieve a certain scale. They take more time to develop which can slow us down, compounding that risk. But, the more we learned about the manufacturing processes and chemicals used in toilet paper and wet wipes, the more confident we felt that we could make something better. YOLO!
Thank you!
Your purchases keep the lights on (and hopefully a bit more) and make these kinds of efforts possible. When our business is in a healthy financial place, it allows us to direct some of our attention, (did we mention we’re a team of two full-time employees?) into projects like the ones above.
So, thank you. We appreciate every single order. Rest assured your hard-earned money is slowly and steadily helping to create outdoor spaces that are healthier and more accessible, as well as outdoor enthusiasts who are more confident and prepared.
A sincere thank you! Have fun out there!
Jake, Noah and Team PACT