Kiting, A Family of Environment Friendly Sports

Kiting is arguably one of the most environmental friendly families of sport due to a number of reasons:

1. The equipment is simple is enough that it takes an average amount of energy to fabricate them.
2. The equipment is small enough that one can walk with them, use a bicycle trailer to bring them to the beaches, get on a bus or car pool with them.
3. Except for wind power, there is absolutely no other power source needed (tow-boat, skidoo, jet-ski, helicopter, plane, etc.) to practice the sport
4. Kite sports do not pollute the environment like boat, jet-ski or skidoo do.

So once the equipment is made, there is no extra energy needed in the the life time of the equipment (5 years for kites, 10 years for boards).

Furthermore, the practice of kite sports can lead to the promotion of the following environmental friendly activities:

1. Kites can be used in the shipping industry to reduce oil and gas consumption
2. Kites also can be use for land transportation especially in the snow country expeditions.
3. The more we practice kiting, the more we understand the potential of the power zone, the kite dynamics and can use that knowledge to create better kite power generator.

What you can do to help?

To help the environment, a kiter should do the following:

• Minimize driving to kite at your local spots.  If they are close enough, walk there with your gears.  If they are too far to walk, get a used bicycle trailer (the standard one used to carry kids is fine) to tow all your gear to the beach.  I have seen some kiters cycling 5km or 10km to go kiting.  If you live too far to cycle, try to use the bus or car pool (if you have to use a SUV to get to remote sites, make sure you car pool then it will be less polluted than a regular car for 1 person).

 
Check out this interesting video of an ultimate bicycle trailer video posted on Youtube.com.  Fortunately you don't need one this big to carry all your kiting gears.

• Explore and check out new kiting spots close enough that you can walk or cycle there.
•  Similarly when you are on vacation, try to stay close enough to the kiting spots such that you can walk or bicycle there to kite (or try to car pool).
• Learn to repair your kite and repair your bladder to extend its life time as much as possible.  For most tears on the kite canopy, just clean the area, tape it with sail repair tape and hand sew around the tear (use dental floss if you don't have any strong thread or when you are on vacation).  Some kiters simply put a thin piece of paper on top and hot-iron to seal the sail repair tape permanently on the torn area.
• Sell your old kites on the used market.  Don't let your old kites become forgotten in your garage.

Any other environmental tip for kiters?