Warm heads lead to happy animals

Ski resorts across the West’s mountainous terrain have implemented sustainable practices that range from mandatory employee busses to wind-powered ski lifts. One entrepreneur not only helps warm skiers and outdoor adventurers, she had designed her products so that virtually no waste goes into the landfill, and in her efforts, animal-shelter critters benefit too. More than a decade ago, Jytte Mau (pronounced You-Tay) began marketing her colorful ski hats beyond her home near Sun Valley, Idaho. The wool-knit hats featured Nordic-knit designs, handmade quality and fleece bands to prevent woolly itching on the skiers’ forehead. “The problem I encountered,” says Mau, whose hats are labeled with her first name, Jytte, “is that rolls of fleece come in 60-inch-wide bolts of fabric, yet when we cut the fleece liner bands into 18-inch strips, there’s lots of waste.” Because of the fleece material’s stretch, the fabric’s bias, the itchless fleece bands could only be cut from one direction to achieve the proper fit. Mau was puzzled: What could she and her team of seamstresses and knitters do with the soft fleece. Afterall, Jytte designed the hats with minimal waste of wool yarns. “We tried making stuffed animals, children’s toys and mittens,” she recalls. “When we heard that the local animal shelter here in the Sun Valley area needed beds for animals coming out of anesthesia, we tried sewing up cat sleeping bags.” It was a marriage made in a heavenly ski-resort area, Sun Valley, where the valley’s 21,000 residents support the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley. “Jytte’s hats has given us little fleece mats that we use in the cat room of the shelter,” says shelter manager, Robin Potts. “The kitties love them. The mats are easy to wash and dry, which we do each day.” The non-profit shelter provides services for 1,500 animals a year—mostly dogs and cats with the occasional rabbit and Guinea pig visits too, totaling nearly a million dollars in annual expenses. So Jytte’s recycling ideas are very welcome, and the sustainable products go beyond pet bedding. “Our cat goes batty for Jytte’s catnip mice,” says the shelter’s Director of Development and Communications, Brooke Bonner. “Jytte uses the extra wool scraps from the hats, adds catnip that she grows in her garden, and even makes a tail like a mouse tail from the hat tassels. My cat is so so so in love with the toy.” Bonner adds that the shelter is considering using the catnip toy as a fundraiser by selling the cat-attractant. Jytte specialized in other fundraising products for non-profit organizations with custom-designed hats. “We design and can produce a minimum number of hats for worthy causes like The Grand Targhee Avalanche Dogs and various ski teams,” she notes, and she employees local artisans verses her hat-company competition which produces abroad instead of in the U.S. “Recycling fabric remnants to create additional lifestyle products just makes sense,” says Jytte. “I’ve been in business for more than a decade and have never had a Dumpster. I take home one small bag of garbage a week—that’s it.” Her philosophy is that she have a sustainable business in a beautiful mountain town surrounded by the Smoky Mountains of Idaho, pristine waterways and winter xc ski trails or summer hiking/biking trails, “so we don’t need to add to the landfill. Even when I need cardboard boxes for shipping, I pick up boxes from other shops to reuse.” Animal shelters around the West have requested the fleece beds and used them with success. Of course Jytte test-drives her recycle products with her own pets—four cats and one dog.