It's sort of a black-diamond run environmental problem: Skiers and the resorts they visit buy 1 million pairs of skis annually, leaving older equipment to pile up in garages and sheds and eventually end up in the trash.

The high-tech and mixed compositional makeup of snow-sports products makes recycling a difficult affair and, until recently, no one was collecting and reprocessing the materials as commodities.

Now, Waste-Not Recycling, based outside Loveland, is helping to lead a pioneering initiative to recycle and reuse skiing equipment. Its objective is to change how manufacturers do business, triggering a revolution in a multibillion-dollar industry with deep ties to Colorado.

"Nobody in the world is doing this," Anita Comer, president and CEO of Waste-Not, said of the ski-recycling program.

Working with the national trade group Snowsports Industries America, Waste-Not began testing its new processing line last summer to break down hundreds of