Salomon to use renewably sourced high-tech material on ski boots

Following on from our article 'How green is your snow gear' we were interested to spot that sports giant Salomon has been working with material manufacturer DuPont to create an alpine ski boot that partly uses materials made from renewable sources.

In actual fact it's only the collar of Salomon's 'Ghost' freeride-spec boot that uses the new DuPint Hytrel RS thermoplastic elastomer, but it is a start!

The collar, which holds the top of the boot in place and protects the lower leg, needs to be impact resistant and yet flexible at low temperatures. It seems Salomon pro riders have been testing the new material all winter and have given it the thumbs up, meaning the boot has gone into production for general release this forthcoming 2009/2010 winter season.

If like us, you're wondering what exactly a DuPont Hytel RS thermoplastic elastomer is made from, we had a nosy round DuPont's site and found it actually starts out life as corn! The corn is harvested for it's natural sugar content, which is then fermented and used to replace petrochemical-based polyols in the Hytel material manufacturing process. We're off to ferment some corn to see if we could run our Renault Kangoo on the stuff. If it doesn't work we'll settle for popcorn.

Source : DuPont press release